Semi-technical vocabulary, a type of vocabulary with both a technical and non-technical meaning (e.g., colon: part of the large intestine; punctuation mark), is an area of controversy owing to disagreement over its definition and characteristics. While it is widely held that learning technical vocabulary is critical for learners of English for Specific Purposes (ESP), several studies have also focused on semi-technical vocabulary because these words often have multiple meanings, depending on the context, and may therefore be harder to learn and understand than purely technical words. This study aims to revisit semi-technical vocabulary in medicine to address these controversial issues by re-evaluating a 595 semi-technical medical word list developed by Hsu (2013). A core meaning-based analysis identified 302 potentially confusing semi-technical medical words. These are mostly mid-frequency words; some are academic and low-frequency words. The findings also revealed pedagogic challenges associated with word form frequency-based lists deserving of further research.

半技术词汇，一种既有技术意义又有非技术意义的词汇（例如，冒号: 大肠的一部分；标点符号），由于对其定义和特征的分歧而成为一个有争议的领域。虽然人们普遍认为学习技术词汇对于特定用途英语 (ESP) 的学习者至关重要，但一些研究也关注半技术词汇，因为这些词通常具有多种含义，具体取决于上下文，因此可能更难学习和理解不是纯技术的话。本研究旨在通过重新评估由 Hsu (2013) 开发的 595 个半技术医学词汇表来重新审视医学中的半技术词汇，以解决这些有争议的问题。基于核心意义的分析确定了 302 个可能令人困惑的半技术医学词汇。这些大多是中频词；有些是学术和低频词。