Gastroenterology

The eighth entry is o inibidor da bomba de protões, and the English term keeps the same three nouns while throwing away everything that held them together. It is « proton pump inhibitor ». Not a preposition anywhere in it, and the reader is left to supply the relations himself, working from the right: an inhibitor of a pump, and a pump that moves protons. Portuguese neither can nor tries; it writes de twice and the phrase is settled before it ends. The habit runs through medical English, and this page carries more of it: « adenoma detection rate », « bowel preparation », « capsule endoscopy ». Two things are worth taking away. Only the last word behaves as a noun, so the plural goes on that one alone — « proton pump inhibitors », never on the pieces in front of it. And a phrase built this way is nearly always cut down to initials the moment it has been said once, which is why a ward talks about « PPIs » and a report prints « ADR » without ever spelling either of them out again.