Paul’s Blog

This year (about a week before my birthday, Feb. 4th)  I “sprained” my ankle.

Curiously, my ankle really swelled up fast — the above photos, I took myself with my iphone as I sat in the waiting room of my local clinic about 2 hrs aft of the incident.  I can only guess at how the process works, since it’s only tissue damage mostly, rather than actual vessel tears or something like that.

Equally interesting, was the unique hemocyanic coloration just proximal to the phalanges which really turned dark purple about 7 days later, so I guess the connective matrix was too thick to allow continued navigation of erythrocytes by gravity?

(the above pic doesn’t do justice to the hue, as I was too lazy to cross the living room to the light switch)

Curious about it (just a tad) I did a quick google to find out more.  Thus, this entire event lead me to eventually discover (and question demandingly) why on earth we call it a sprained ankle instead of sprang or strained ankle (either of which would seem to make more sense).

I never really got a decent answer to that, as dictionary.com only says this about the etymology: ” Origin:  1595–1605; orig. uncert. … The verb is attested from 1622. A connection has been suggested to M.Fr. espraindre “to press out,” from L. exprimere, but the sense evolution is difficult.”

I’m trying not to focus on the fact that this could be perceived as a painful path to a mystery with no solid answers!  (ha ha).  Hamlet was no fool… it’s best to laugh about such things!