Why...

do the British drop the definite article when referring to someone being hospitalized? E.g. - "She remained at hospital for two weeks." I wonder why this fell out of use in American English. Then again, Americans drop the "the" before school: "she's going to school," so why not drop it when referring to the hospital in a general sense and not in reference to a specific hospital?

4x4

In Britain, the term "tetraplegia" is used to described the condition of paralysis of all four limbs, or, from the neck down. Now, in the U.S., we use the term "quadraplegia." It turns out that the British, being better schooled in regard to word roots and the classical languages, use the prefix "tetra" because it is Greek and therefore makes a more sensible pair with the root "plegia," which is also Greek (tetra means four, while plegia means blow or strike), than the Latin-based "quadra."