SPORTS, GAMES, AND TOYS
...A racket nail (sometimes in the French ongle en raquette) is a broad, flat thumbnail that results from a congenitally short, wide distal phalanx of the thumb. A more obscure game reference is the so-called battledore placenta--one in which the umbilical cord originates from the edge rather than from the center. Battledore was an ancestor of badminton and played with a shuttlecock and paddle (the battledore) not unlike the type used to put pizzas in the oven. The term ping-pong infection aptly describes the phenomenon of sexual partners repeatedly exchanging an infectious agent back and forth. A ping-pong ball fracture is a depressed fracture of the skull, like a dented ball which has lost its usefulness for play.
From The Words of Medicine: Sources, Meanings, and Delights (2001), by Robert Fortuine.
Medical Historical Library at the Yale School of Medicine
New Haven, Connecticut
I've written about silly medical words as well. Their ubiquity can be downright distracting for some of us who use it regularly.
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