!@#$%&#$@

Saw this sign outside NUH telling visitors what they or should not do when they visit patients.

Look at the last line. Abusive visitors and patients? How does abusive fit in here? I initially thought it meant visitors and patients who are coarse and vulgar, who will hurl vulgarities or physically abuse the nurses if they do not get their way. My friend, a speech therapist ever got punched by her patient because he didn’t want to take his medicine so I was thinking along this line and this is usually how abusive is defined (see definitions below).

Dictionary.com

1. Characterized by improper or wrongful use: abusive utilization of public funds.

2. Using or containing insulting or coarse language: finally reprimanded the abusive colleague.

3. Causing physical injury to another: abusive punishment.

4. Relating to or practicing sexual abuse.

Longman

1. using cruel words or physical violence:

Smith denies using abusive language to the referee.

He became abusive and his wife was injured in the struggle.

OED

1. Wrongly used, perverted, misapplied, improper: in Rhetoric, catachrestic.

2. Full of abuses; corrupt. arch.

3. Given to misusing, ill-using, perverting. Obs.

4. Employing or containing bad language or insult; scurrilous, reproachful.

But when I saw the Chinese translation, it had no hint of abusive visitors or patients. It merely said 有权拒绝不合作的访客进入医院 which is translated as they have a right to deny uncooperative visitors entry into the hospital.

So why “abusive visitors and patients”? Maybe the hospital was thinking along the lines of “abuse of rules”, but abuse of rules has a different meaning – it means misusing or using the rules inappropriately (definition 1 on dictionary.com and 1&3 in the OED); something like trying to beat the system. So perhaps the people at NUH misunderstood the meaning of “abuse of rules” and used it wrongly or were primed differently so it sounds weird to me in this context.