When I use a word…: Oe no!

As chairman of examiners in last year's preclinical examinations I was responsible for drafting the examiners' report. I circulated the first draft to my coexaminers. One of them asked me to change “fetus” to “foetus.”

Fetus derives from the Latin word feto, I breed, but the spelling “foetus” has been around since at least the beginning of the seventh century. St Isidore, Archbishop of Seville, in a section entitled “De homine et partibus eius” in his Originum sive etymologiarum libri (Books of Origins or Etymologies), commonly known as the Etymologiae (published in about 620 AD), …