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A.Word.A.Day--stat

stat (stat) adverb

Immediately (mostly used in a medical context).

[From Latin statim, literally immediately.]

"As she walked away, I made a couple of calls, stat, in case the issue came up again."
Beth Teitell; What is it Delegates Do, Anyway?; Boston Herald (Massachusetts); Jul 26, 2004.

"'Scrubs' continues to look for humor in medical mishaps... Hand me the defibrillator, stat, I've got to shock myself out of hysterics."
Ted Cox; 'Scrubs' Hospitalized After Jumping Shark; Daily Herald (Arlington Heights, Illinois); May 7, 2002.

The magic of technology is spreading. What we couldn't even imagine only a few years ago is now possible. With just a few clicks of a mouse button, someone in one corner of the world can make contact with a fellow human being thousands of miles away and offer to sell her cheap Viagra.

Seriously, I'm sick of spam. I think spammers should be an integral part of the new NASA policy. We should send spammers (and virus writers too, while we're at it) on a one-way ticket to Mars.

I filter them out but with more than a thousand pieces of spam hitting my mailbox every day, some of this net excrement still manages to sneak past. Until recently, most of the spam was in English. Lately, it's been in Chinese, Spanish, French, German, Vietnamese and many other tongues. Comparing these pieces of junk mail with their English language edition, one can improve one's knowledge of foreign languages. For example, many of you may have received a message beginning:

From: Mariam Abachha <mariamabachha@hotmail.com>
Subject: Envie d'associé avec vous

Translation: Nigerian loot now offered in exquisite French language.

So far I haven't received any spam in Latin, but I wouldn't hold my breath. Till spammers catch up on Latin, let us this week peruse a few words from that ancient language.

-Anu Garg

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