Health Span: Words We're Watching
The term life span is familiar to most of us. Its full definition in this dictionary is:
1 : the average length of life of a kind of organism or of a material object especially in a particular environment or under specified circumstances
2 : the duration of existence of an individual
The term dates to the 19th century and continues to be useful in phrases like "the average life span of a typical house cat" and "things people can do to increase their life spans."
The word has a relatively new frequent companion: health span. A person's health span is the length of time that the person is healthy — not just alive.
The earliest evidence of health span that our preliminary research has turned up is from the late 1980s:
"A revolutionary increase in life span has already occurred. A corresponding increase in health span, the maintenance of full function as nearly as possible to the end of life, should be the next gerontological goal." — John W. Rowe and Robert L. Kahn, Science, 10 July 1987
But there's been an uptick in use in recent months:
"The equipment and supplies that when used by the right people give us longer life spans and health spans are well worth their cost, but they don't come cheap." — Dave Denslow, The Gainesville (Florida) Sun, 9 Aug. 2015
"… I have played a key role with prolonging the health span of the people in my care through ongoing counseling and education … " — Kimberly Isburg, The Des Moines (Iowa) Register, 14 July 2015
Sometimes the term has no space between its parts:
"... researchers are working to understand the biology of aging to extend the "healthspan" of older adults rather than emphasizing lifespan, which can involve tacking on a few extra months for the seriously ill." — David Templeton, The Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, 9 Dec. 2014
(That's true of life span too. While life span has been the most common styling for the word's, um, life span, we do see evidence of both life-span and lifespan.)
One more word about health span: it's a proper noun too. As a closed compound (with no space) it's the name of an Ohio health insurance company and a British mail-order company, to name just two.
#wordswe'rewatching talks about words we are increasingly seeing in use but that have not yet met our criteria for entry.
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