Rx

Today, as I picked up a box with eye-drops for my recently irritated left eye, I noticed written on the box: “Rx only.”   Probably, like everyone, I have noticed “Rx” on drug store signs and associated with prescriptions and never really given that any real thought. 

How did that come to be, I wondered?

Rx?    I really should know what that means.

Really Expensive?

Sometimes names are a tricky business.  We nick-named my friend Butt-Stain, for example, on account of—   On second thought, that may not be a helpful illustration.  Take, instead, the word “nincompoop.” The word is a descriptive term for a foolish person and sounds like three things jammed together.  Some scholars place the origins of the word in the Bible, associated with Nicodemus, the Pharisee who clashed with Christ in the Gospel of John.  Other scholars link the origins to the Dutch word “poep,” which became “poop” in English.

Yes, THAT very poop!

Well, there is quite a spread in origins between the Holy Scripture and the outhouse.  The truth (and a whole lot of other stuff) likely lies someplace in-between those purported origins.   Furthermore, words often drift in meaning.  I recall the day when people used “sick” to describe someone who felt ill.  Somewhere along the line the word found a new placement.  You may hear someone exclaim, “Man that was a sick move!” after watching an athlete perform an astoundingly apt feat.  Sick can also be a good thing.         

Naturally, to find an answer to the origins of Rx, I consulted Wikipedia (which like a gypsy lover cannot consistently be trusted) for an answer.  According to Wikipedia, Rx is a symbol for prescriptions originating from a medieval abbreviation of the Latin word “recipe.”  The origins of that word are rooted in “take” or “to take.”

That simple.

Sick, dude.

--Mitchell Hegman