Author Description

Women born in the Middle East use the phrase 'the cunning sickness' (mudhabith Arabic) or 'the bad illness' to talk about cancer, while both women born in the Middle East and Anglo-Australians use 'the Big C Anglo-Australian women also use rhyming slang to refer to cancer such as 'Jack the Dancer's got me.' Research has also found that women from Italy use 'that terrible illness,' 'the illness that has not localised,' and 'that illness that we've talked about' to talk about cancer. Biomedical terminology also assists these women in speaking of the unspeakable. Words such as the 'mass,' the 'tumour,' the 'cyst,' and the 'sarcoma' allow women to refer to cancer without using its name.