Ache and pain

Pressman · April 8, 2004, 11:52am

Hello! Be so kind to explain! When I go to the doctor Which word must I say: Ache or Pain? I don’t know it!
thanks in advance :shock:

Alan · April 8, 2004, 7:07pm

Hi,

Ache is precise ie toothache headache but pain is more general.

Alan

Seeemilywrite · April 19, 2006, 7:31pm

For me an ache is a milder form of pain. An ache you could just deal with, a pain is something that is going to require attention.

Yankee · April 19, 2006, 8:56pm

Hmmmm…

I’ve got a challenge for the native speakers here.
Which sentence would a doctor find more extreme?

Doctor, I’ve got a severe backache.
Doctor, I’ve got severe back pain.

Or would the two be the same here?

Amy

Jamie_K · April 20, 2006, 3:17am

To me the pain sounds sharper, and the ache sounds duller.

Alan · April 20, 2006, 6:54am

I think I’ll stick to my original explanation of two years ago:

Ache is exact and pain is general. After all an ache in the neck is different from a pain in the neck, if you get my drift.

Alan

Yankee · April 20, 2006, 7:10am

Thanks, guys.

Yes, I also think “ache” is more specific/localized. As to the severity of an ache, maybe I’m just overly sensitive as a result of my last toothache.

Amy

Spencer · April 20, 2006, 7:40am

As a result?
Don’t I have to use the "in result " form?
(I like as a result better)
Spencer

Jamie_K · April 20, 2006, 9:43am

“In result of” is not really correct English. If you google it, you find very few examples, and a lot of them are in English written in places like Poland and Bulgaria. We generally say “as a result of”.

Jamie_K · April 20, 2006, 9:49am

From the Oxford American Dictionary:

ache
a continuous or prolonged dull pain in a part of one’s body : the ache in her head worsened.
[in sing. ] figurative an emotion experienced with painful or bittersweet intensity : an ache in her heart.

pain
1 physical suffering or discomfort caused by illness or injury : she’s in great pain | those who suffer from back pain.
• a feeling of marked discomfort in a particular part of the body : he had severe pains in his stomach | chest pains.
• mental suffering or distress : the pain of loss.
• (also pain in the neck or vulgar slang pain in the a**) [in sing. ] informal an annoying or tedious person or thing : she’s a pain.
2 ( pains) careful effort; great care or trouble : she took pains to see that everyone ate well | he is at pains to point out that he isn’t like that.

According to this dictionary, ache indicates a dull pain that is continuous. The word can also be used metaphorically.

Yankee · April 20, 2006, 12:52pm

Hi !

Thanks for the various ache + pain input. Although I’d agree that an ‘ache’ would generally be used for “less severe pain” and is also more “specific”, I just can’t help but think that that’s just a bit too general.
My last toothache was anything but dull. (It was, however, continuous and localized.)
But I guess I’m just being a pain.

Hi Spencer

‘As a result of’ is a standard phrase in my neck of the woods.

Amy

Spencer · April 20, 2006, 2:01pm

My neck of the woods?
Now you got me!
I have no clue what that phrase could mean at all!
In my NECK of the WOODS?
Jeeez!

Yankee · April 20, 2006, 2:28pm

Hi Spencer

Oops! Sorry about that.

“Neck of the woods” is an informal idiom for “area/region/neighborhood/vicinity”. It’s well-known in the US, but I’m not sure about Britain…

Amy

Spencer · April 20, 2006, 3:21pm

Thanks, so it’s your area.
But why?
I mean, why is that?
Does anyone know it?

Pamela · April 21, 2006, 7:45am

Pain is sharp pain and could be sudden while ache is prolonged.

Conchita · April 21, 2006, 11:20am

Here again, isn’t it a matter of collocation and phonetics? Don’t some terms and expressions just become set phrases because it’s easier to pronounce them this way or because a certain word sounds better than another?

Re: Neck of the woods

Why don’t you have a look at the following theory from The Phrase Finder? I found it quite interesting:

In the country, there aren’t any street addresses. So you literally use landmarks to refer to where a person lives. Up in your neck of the woods or up the holler. On the mountain. Down on the river.

: “Neck of the woods,” meaning a certain region or neighborhood, is one of those phrases we hear so often that we never consider how fundamentally weird they are. In the case of “neck,” we have one of a number of terms invented by the colonists in Early America to describe the geographical features of their new home. There was, apparently, a conscious attempt made to depart from the style of place names used in England for thousands of years in favor of new “American” names. So in place of “moor,” “heath,” “dell,” “fen” and other such Old World terms, the colonists came up with “branch,” “fork,” “hollow,” “gap,” “flat” and other descriptive terms used both as simple nouns (“We’re heading down to the hollow”) and parts of proper place names (“Jones Hollow”).

: “Neck” had been used in English since around 1555 to describe a narrow strip of land, usually surrounded by water, based on its resemblance to the neck of an animal. But the Americans were the first to apply “neck” to a narrow stand of woods or, more importantly, to a settlement located in a particular part of the woods. In a country then largely covered by forests, your “neck of the woods” was your home, the first American neighborhood

This is an example of a “fossil” word in which an old word has been preserved in only one or two special sayings. Short Shrift is one example. In the case of Neck the ancestor words in Old Breton (cnoch) and Old German (hnack) both had a sense of “hill” or “summit”; ie identifying a place.

Spencer · April 21, 2006, 1:08pm

Thanks Choncita, I thought of the neck as the body-part, but I can see the the connection between the neck as the srip of a land,and the woods already,thank You.
Spencer