I wish to begin by thanking the seven scholars who kindly consented to reading and commenting on my paper. The especially broad range of suggestions and criticisms will prove highly useful in my ongoing study of medical slang and points to future lines of research in the area of language and health. Donald Pollock highlights identifying medical slang for health care institutions in addition to that used for patients and other physicians. Since this pertains to my comments on the work by Gordon, I should take advantage of the opportunity to say how important his study on hospital slang in California was for my own interpretation. I observed that Gordon concentrated on medical slang for patients and not (additionally) for health care institutions themselves. This should be taken more as an observation than a criticism. As Pollock notes, either there may have been little or no medical slang for health care institutions in the USA in the early 1980s, or Gordon chose not to focus on the issue, i.e., he did not necessarily overlook it. Although I disagree with some of Gordon's conclusions (see below, in response to Trostle), I agree with him on two central premises, without which the rest of the analysis becomes fruitless for either his paper or mine: that medical slang exists as a linguistic entity amenable to study, and that it has a relevant bearing on the medical ethos.