What was that you said?

In this article the curmudgeonly authors take a broad strokes reflection upon the misuse of language in the medical literature through the lens of paediatric pulmonology. The paper addresses the cult of conciseness as reflected in the explosion of ambiguous acronyms, the dismantling of the Latin and Greek origins of medical terminology, and the insatiable desire to change taxonomy seemingly for change sake. The paper serves as a call to arms for those seasoned clinicians of a certain age to push back against the tic-toc approach to learning in the literature and at the bedside in modern paediatric respiratory medicine.