I was waiting in a pharmacy line the other day when I started thinking about the devolution of the phrase “prescription drug”.

Americans used to go to pharmacies to pick up “prescription drugs”.

But it is rare to hear any of them say that phrase today.

Now we call these drugs simply “prescriptions”.

But a “prescription” is what a doctor writes or makes.

So it must sound odd to many non-Americans to hear an American telling a pharmacist that he or she wants “to pick up my prescription”, when what the person actually wants to do is to pick up the drug, not what the doctor wrote.

The truncation, if you will, of the phrase “prescription drug” into the noun “prescription” is only the first step in the phrase’s devolution.

The second step comes in many American hospitals.

I was telling my brother, who has been an operating-room technician, about this devolution, and he said that many American hospital employees do not even call the drug a “prescription”.

No, they refer to such a drug by the noun “script” — the six letters in the middle of the noun “prescription”.

So there you have it: “prescription drug” devolved to “prescription”, which devolved to “script”.

I wonder what is next — a “scri”?