men in white coats
Doctors or orderlies
Men in white coats are psychiatric hospital workers, so called because medical staff traditionally wore white lab coats.
The phrase typically appears in humorous or self-deprecating contexts about mental instability: Keep talking like that and the men in white coats will come for you.
It suggests being hauled away to an asylum, playing on mid-twentieth-century imagery of forcible psychiatric commitment.
- trick cyclistRhyming slang for psychiatrist
- chemistSubstance and reaction scientist
- doctorLicensed medical healer
- authority figurePerson wielding official power
- psychologistMental behavior specialist
expert · sanatorium · surgeon · physician · asylum · rubber room · psychiatric ward · mental institution · mad scientist · straitjacket · anesthesiologist · clinician · neuroscientist · biologist · nurse · hospital staff · geneticist · pharmacologist
men in white coatsmental patients
People receiving psychiatric care
men in white coatslaypeople
Those outside a profession
ordinary people · civilians · amateurs · outsiders · non-experts
men in white coatswitch doctors
Magical healers in tribes
faith healers · shamans · quacks · snake oil salesmen · naturopaths
men's, manliness, manhood, mankind, white, whiter, whitest, whiten, whiteness