Random Word of the Day, Or the Post Where I Use the Word ‘Nipple’ 2 Times

In my job as an attorney for a workers comp defense firm, I have to read pages and pages of medical records daily. I don’t have a medical background, so I often have to break out a medical dictionary to help me with words like spondylosis, radiculopathy and osteophyte. Today I came across a new word: nubbin.

I actually thought I knew what this word meant, having been exposed to it on an episode of “Friends” a few years back. (See where I get my vast and impressive expanse of knowledge? Yes, that’s right: television sitcoms!) Of course, if you’re not familiar with the episode, then you need to understand that the character Chandler has a third nipple that he calls a ‘nubbin.’ But the way the doctor used it, it wasn’t referring to an extra nipple. It was some kind of ‘nubbin’ in the guy’s shoulder.

So I thought, well, this medical doctor has used the word ‘nubbin,’ it must be a medical term. I looked it up. It’s not in the medical dictionary. I looked in Webster’s. Yep. It’s there. It means a stunted ear of corn or something that is, well, stumpy.

I also looked it up on Wikipedia because I’m all about researching pointless things on the internet for my own amusement. If you Google it, you find the British have a company that sells Nubbin Oil, which I’m not going to link to because Nubbin Oil is for, ahem, adult pleasure. And that kind of thing should NOT be going on. But you must admit it IS funny because you could say it’s oil for something stumpy. Not very flattering to British men, mind you, and that’s all I’m going to say about that because my grandparents read my blog.