Question about a French word

I proofread for a English-language medical journal, and I occasionally come across the word "medicament". It appears as if this word entered English via French, and although "medicament" is still listed in English dictionaries, it seems to be used only rarely in modern English -- often (perhaps exclusively?) by non-native speakers and/or native English speakers with considerable French-language exposure (eg. Canadians). Searching the PubMed site, I find a mere 1398 journals articles with the word "medicament" (some of which are in French, and almost all of which have author names that suggest the authors are non-native speakers of English). By comparison, over 2,800,000 articles contain the word "medicine". Q: What is the status of the word "medicament" in modern French? Is it used very often? What exactly does "medicament" mean, and how does it differ from "la medecine"?

0 members like this

▶ Reply to This

Replies to This Discussion

Permalink Reply by Neil Coffey on March 9, 2011 at 4:22am

Both words médicament and médecine are normal, everyday French words. However, they have fundamentally different meanings and are generally not interchangeable.

The word médecine means "medicine" as in the science of medicine, or "medical practice".

The word médicament means "(a) medicine" as in "(a) drug, pharmaceutical".

Words corresponding to médicament also exist in other Romance languages. For example, Spanish has medicamento. So the writers of the journal articles you read may not even be native speakers of French necessarily, but also other related languages. (N.B. In the other languages, the difference between médecine and médicament isn't necessarily so clear-cut, e.g. Spanish medicina can refer both to the science and to a drug or course of drugs.)

▶ Reply

Permalink Reply by Medicament Question on March 9, 2011 at 4:52am

Thank you. Your reply is very helpful. I recently proofread a short English research paper in which the author (a Japanese doctor) had used the word "medicament" about 20 times. Because the author had previously seen the word "medicament" in a published article, she had a difficult time believing me that it was a relatively rare word in English and should be replaced either with "medicine" or with "medication". She tried telling me that the reason I stumbled on the word was that it was British usage. (I'm American). Hm-m-m-m...

▶ Reply

Permalink Reply by Neil Coffey on March 9, 2011 at 5:37am

It does theoretically exist in English, but I worked for a medical software firm for 5 years and don't recall ever seeing the word "medicament" in actual usage.