Not much in the way of language error gets by the Arkansas Times’ managing editor, Leslie Peacock. I’ve had personal experience with this. Leslie advises me there’s a television series on AETN about a character named Doc Martin, “who is phobic about blood.” AETN sent out this press release about the program:

“Filmed on location in Port Isaac, Cornwall, England, ‘Doc Martin: Revealed’ will provide viewers awaiting the return of Britain’s curmudgeonly hemophiliac with a behind-the-scenes look at the making of the series’ sixth season.”

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ME Peacock writes, “I’d be curmudgeonly, too, if I thought I might bleed to death every time I stubbed my toe.” A hemophiliac is a person who has hemophilia, which means he experiences excessive bleeding, “owing to the absence or abnormality of a clotting factor in the blood.” Hemophiliacs go to great lengths to avoid anything that might cause them to start bleeding. Doc Martin sounds like someone who suffers from hemophobia — “an abnormal fear of blood.”

Tsarevich Alexi Romanov, who would have been the czar of Russia eventually if the Communists hadn’t shot him, was a famous hemophiliac.

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Had she been asked, Leslie would have pointed out in her uncurmudgeonly way that the Russian form of czar is tsar, and that tsar is still technically correct when referring to Russian emperors. But czar, the Polish spelling, is now more generally used. American news stories refer to the federal volleyball czar, not the volleyball tsar.

Not much gets by John Hall either, including this item: “This so-called nuclear option represents a radical shift in Senate procedure. Democrats had threatened to use it after Senate Republicans upheld the confirmation of three judges to the D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals, and the action could have a huge impact on the federal bench.” The Republicans held up those confirmations, not upheld them.

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