"The chief virtue that language can have is clearness, and nothing detracts from it so much as the use of unfamiliar words"
About this Quote
Clearness isn`t just a stylistic preference here; it`s a medical ethic. Hippocrates is writing from a world where language is not decoration but a tool that can change outcomes: a diagnosis, a regimen, a warning about danger. In that setting, obscurity isn`t merely annoying - it`s costly. The line has the flat, practical force of someone who has watched misunderstanding turn into suffering.
The intent is almost aggressively anti-elite. By naming "unfamiliar words" as the main threat to clarity, Hippocrates is calling out a quiet professional vice: the temptation to hide uncertainty or inflate authority through specialized vocabulary. Jargon can function like incense in a temple - it signals expertise, creates distance, and asks the listener to submit. His subtext is that persuasion should not depend on mystique. If your language needs a fog machine, your knowledge probably isn`t doing the work you claim it is.
Context matters: early medicine competed with superstition, priestly power, and folk practice. A physician who could speak plainly had an advantage, not just in teaching apprentices but in convincing patients and families to follow treatments that might be uncomfortable or counterintuitive. Clarity becomes a form of consent: people can only truly agree to what they understand.
Read now, the quote lands as a rebuke to technocratic culture. It doesn`t reject complexity; it rejects needless complexity. The metric isn`t how smart you sound, but how reliably your meaning survives contact with another human being.
The intent is almost aggressively anti-elite. By naming "unfamiliar words" as the main threat to clarity, Hippocrates is calling out a quiet professional vice: the temptation to hide uncertainty or inflate authority through specialized vocabulary. Jargon can function like incense in a temple - it signals expertise, creates distance, and asks the listener to submit. His subtext is that persuasion should not depend on mystique. If your language needs a fog machine, your knowledge probably isn`t doing the work you claim it is.
Context matters: early medicine competed with superstition, priestly power, and folk practice. A physician who could speak plainly had an advantage, not just in teaching apprentices but in convincing patients and families to follow treatments that might be uncomfortable or counterintuitive. Clarity becomes a form of consent: people can only truly agree to what they understand.
Read now, the quote lands as a rebuke to technocratic culture. It doesn`t reject complexity; it rejects needless complexity. The metric isn`t how smart you sound, but how reliably your meaning survives contact with another human being.
Quote Details
| Topic | Writing |
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