Sunday Rest: Asperger's. Word Not To Use Today.

 The conversation went like this:

ME: Yes, she is a lovely person...though she is quite surprising in her manner, at times. I wonder if she might have Asperger's Syndrome.

YOUNG PERSON: You can't say Asperger's Syndrome any more. You have to say autistic spectrum.

ME: Oh, really? All right, then. I think she must be a high-functioning - 

YOUNG PERSON: You can't say that, either. You can only say on on the spectrum.

ME: Oh. Um...gosh. Right. Um...hasn't it been cold, this week?

*****

Ah well. At least I got the pronoun right.

Sunday Rest: Asperger's. Johann Friedrich Karl Asperger 1906 - 1980 did a lot of work on children's neurology. His work was largely ignored during his lifetime, but became better known in the 1980s. He was Austrian.

Living under a Nazi regime, as he did during World War II, provided researchers with many opportunities for disgusting behaviour, and having read just a little about Herr Asperger I am not now inclined to use his name to describe anything, whether it happens to be fashionable or not.

The word spectrum is Latin for appearance or image. Specere means to look at.