General
o-sign
What does o-sign mean?
Bedside shorthand for a patient who's deeply out of it — flat on their back, jaw slack, mouth hanging open in a perfect O. It's the look that tells the on-call team this one's circling the drain. Pair it with the Q-sign (tongue lolls out the side) and the prognosis gets worse. Dark humour, but every hospital in the English-speaking world uses it.
"Bed four's gone full O-sign — somebody page ITU."
Origin
Anglo-American hospital slang, mid-20th century.
Frequently asked questions
What does O-sign mean in medicine?
The O-sign describes an unconscious patient lying with the mouth gaping open in an O shape — a sign they are gravely ill.
How do you use O-sign in a sentence?
"By the time we got to the bay, the patient had the O-sign."
Study it as flashcards or scroll it in Vocabulary Flow — saved to your collection.
