When I use a word . . . . Too much healthcare—overdefinition

OverdefinitionI have previously discussed medical overdetection1 as one of two major causes of overdiagnosis.2 The other is overdefinition, a term that has not been noticed by major dictionaries, although it has uses in many different disciplines.Linguistics The earliest English-language instance of “overdefinition” of which I am aware is in a footnote in a 1955 paper by Uriel Weinreich in the journal Language3: “The fallacy of overdefinition has recently been discussed by E. Benveniste ….” In the French-language paper referred to in the footnote,4 Émile Benveniste discussed the difference between polysemy, the possession of several meanings by a single word, and homonymy, the possession of different meanings by words that are spelt the same but have different etymologies. The fallacy is the mistaken attachment of several meanings to a word that has but one meaning, depending on the context in which it is found. For example, as Weinreich explained, “while repasser…
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