Laboratory medicine

Near the end of the list sits le résultat pathologique, and it is the entry most likely to frighten an English reader for no reason at all. In French laboratory language pathologique is simply the opposite of within range. A figure printed with a mark beside it is un résultat pathologique whatever the cause, and the word commits nobody to a diagnosis — which is exactly what this list says out loud: un seul résultat pathologique ne fait pas un diagnostic. « Pathological » in English does not behave that way. In ordinary speech it means compulsive, as in « a pathological liar »; in clinical speech it asserts that disease is already present, as in « a pathological fracture », a bone that gave way because something had eaten into it. Neither reading fits a potassium two points low. What a laboratory in Britain actually prints is « abnormal », or more carefully « outside the reference range », and a doctor will say the bloods came back abnormal. The French word grades a number; the English word names a condition, and only one of the two can be read off a sheet of paper.