Talk:Flu

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I added the top-of-article Dab for "Influenza", and the distinct Dab page Flu, for related reasons. They each have to do with one of two related confusions:

1. One is the misleading standard usage of flu as a synonym for both "stomach flu" and "influenza";
2. the other is the understandable but mistaken use of "influenza" as a synonym for "stomach flu", by people who correctly deduce that "flu" is derived from "influenza" but don't realize that "influenza" is no longer a more formal name for "stomach flu".

--Jerzy(t) 06:53 & Jerzy(t) 07:03, 2005 Feb 24 (UTC)

I'm not sure that it needs disambiguation, but it certainly doesn't need two disambiguations. For all intents and purposes. flu is synonymous with influenza, and many of the links to "flu" rely on that fact. "Stomach flu" - a misnomer - is more than adequately disambiguated by your addition at the top of influenza. - Nunh-huh 07:00, 24 Feb 2005 (UTC)

"For all intents and purposes. flu is synonymous with influenza, and many of the links to "flu" rely on that fact." Well, editors should go through those links and fix them so that they go directly to the correct article. That is one of the main purposes of DAB pages. I will make this page a DAB. --Una Smith (talk) 15:42, 5 December 2007 (UTC)

Flumis

For the moment, I've removed 'Flu is short for the Latin flumis, which means to die of respiratory disease'." I find it not very credible for a few reasons:

• It phrases it as an infinitive; Latin infinitives do not end in 'is'. 'is' sounds like either second person, probably present, ('you X') or an ablative/dative plural, "by/for those who Xed/were Xed" (depending on whether this proposed verb is deponent or not, it could be active or passive in such a noun form.)
• WORDS, a fairly exhaustive Latin dictionary in which I've (as far as I can recall) never been unable to locate a word, has no entry for flumis or anything I can think of that might turn into 'flumis'.
• The only word I can think of (granted, I'm no Latin genius) sounds like flumis, except for, say, fluo, which means 'I flow'. But there's no way that could become flumis that I can think of.

That etymology is wrong. The Merriam-Webster says that influenza comes from the "Italian, literally, influence, from Medieval Latin influentia; from the belief that epidemics were due to the influence of the stars." Flu is a well-documented shortening of the word influenza. WhatamIdoing (talk) 20:31, 8 December 2007 (UTC)