When I use a word . . . The ambiguity of “work” in the ICMJE recommendations on publishing in medical ȷournals

A debateA colleague recently consulted me about the meaning of the word “work.” He had had an authorship dispute with another colleague, arising from their different interpretations of the word as it is used in the Recommendations for the Conduct, Reporting, Editing, and Publication of Scholarly Work in Medical Journals published by the International Committee of Medical Journal Editors (ICMJE).1One of the disputants thought that in the ICMJE recommendations the word “work” meant scholarly activity, or more precisely research, the other that it meant the publication in which the research was described. They were both right.WorkI have elsewhere discussed the origin of the word “work,” from the IndoEuropean root WERG, whose primary meaning was to do.2 The list of English words that derive from it is very long. It includes words that have come down via the Teutonic branch of IndoEuropean: “work” itself and all its derivatives—irksome, boulevard and bulwark,…
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