Your caller asked about the use of "hurt locker" to get her children to do their chores — I remember very fondly a 5th grade teacher who pretended to threaten us with "purple curtains" — "If you don't finish your assignments on time, it'll be purple curtains for you!" etc.

With regard to the "laid-lay" surgery question, I side with "laid." I'm a doctor (a neurologist) myself, and have both positioned patients and dictated surgical reports, although my last was years ago. Here's my argument:

In a typical case, the patient is brought to the OR, and before anesthesia, does usually scoot himself or herself over from the stretcher to the operating table. However, once the patient is under anesthesia, the surgeon may well fine-tune the placement of the patient for best access to the surgical site, wherever it may be. Thus, although the patient does move independently to some extent, it is the surgeon who is responsible for the final position during the operation, not the patient.

Furthermore, a correctly written report always indicates the position of the patient during the operation. "Supine" and "prone" are technical terms in these circumstances. Later on, if there are complications, position may be an important piece of the puzzle, both medically and legally. I've seen nerve injuries related to improper positioning of a limb, for example, and you shouldn't imply that the anesthetized patient was primarily responsible for that position.

Hence, I'd say "the patient was laid on the table," implying "by, or under direction of, the surgeon."

But…wouldn't it be just as easy and much better to use the words "placed" or "positioned"?!

Glenn said:

Since the point of the surgical transcription is to record the medical decisions, directions, and actions, the use of the "(was) laid" construction seems the more appropriate.

My reaction was to wonder: what is the role of a medical transcriptionist? To accurately transcribe the doctor's notes, exactly as the doctor wrote them, or to "improve" the notes?

Grant Barrett said:

Is it ever correct to refer to a mustache as a plural?

You mention it and I start seeing it*. Just last night, I ran across a description of Poirot's "mustaches" in "The Murder of Roger Ackroyd," by Agatha Christie, published in 1926.

I had to show my wife, "Look! There it is!" So, thank you for the show. It adds fun little moments to every day.

* Is there a name for this phenomenon? Like, when you buy a car, then you start noticing that model of car everywhere you go.

telemath said:

Is there a name for this phenomenon? Like, when you buy a car, then you start noticing that model of car everywhere you go.

How about "diegogarcity"?

"We also promised words for the experience of noticing a word for the first time and then feeling like you're seeing it everywhere. Here are a few: diegogarcity, the recency Illusion, and the Baader-Meinhof Phenomenon."
()

A locker on a ship is where things are stored. The chain locker is where the anchor chain is stored for example.

Ben Zimmer's article mentioned several sources, but fails to differentiate between soldiers and Marines. Remember that Marines, like Jim Webb, are members of the sea services, and have significantly differant slang than soldiers, even if they dress the same. I did three tours at the Army artillery school in Oklahoma, and it was always a "multicultural experience."

I entered the Naval Academy in 1986 and then accepted a commission in the Marines. Not only that, but my dad did a tour in the navy from '62 to '66, so I am full of nautical language. If, as a kid, I said to my dad, "hey, where is my sweatshirt?", he might say sarcastically, "look in the 'sweathsirt locker' under 'L' for 'Lost'."

Not only can a locker be a place to store items. A repair locker on a warship holds firefighting equipment and damage control items — it is also a unit of sailors. A large enough ship has several 'repair lockers' distributed around the ship; e.g. Repair Locker 1, 2, etc. this is analogous to an Army unit of 1st Platoon, 2nd Platoon, etc.

The thing is that a 'locker' usually holds the things indicated by the noun before it. Say a bullshit locker is metaphorically full of bullshit. But lockers are also physical places in a ship. So if you enter a 'hurt locker', I imagine it as a room full of an awful lot of 'hurt'.

Ultimately, when you hear the word 'locker' you should immediately look to the nautical realm of terms and slang.