Word of the Day
More about tirrivee
Tirrivee “a tantrum, a display of bad temper” is another perplexing Scots word with no secure etymology. It may be a variant or corruption of the verb tailyevey “to move from side to side, rock” another Scots word of no known etymology. Sir Walter Scott used tirrivee in his Waverley novels, enough to ensure the word’s survival. Tirrivee entered English in the early 19th century.
how is tirrivee used?
Say that you forgive me, that you love me not a whit the less for my yesterday’s tirrivee …
What a tirrivee Dominie was in!
antediluvian
adjective
very old, old-fashioned, or out of date; antiquated.
More about antediluvian
Antediluvian “occurring before the biblical Flood (in Genesis); very old, old-fashioned, or out of date,” comes from the Latin preposition and prefix ante, ante– “before” (naturalized in English) and the noun dīluvium “flood, deluge, inundation,” a derivative of the verb dīluere “to dissolve and wash away” (dīlūtus, the past participle of dīluere, is the source of English dilute). The original meaning of antediluvian was to biblical events or people before the Flood, such as the patriarchs between Adam and Noah; the exaggerated sense “very old, old-fashioned, out of date” developed in the first half of the 18th century. Antediluvian entered English in the first half of the 17th century.
how is antediluvian used?
How can it be that in a country that landed men on the moon, antediluvian locomotives are pushing and pulling dirty, smelly, 50-year-old cars perforated by rust, past crumbling stations, over track that looks like spilled overcooked spaghetti?
So my on-the-job training in science writing started in the antediluvian age when magazines and newspapers held a near-monopolistic control over science writing.
doomscrolling
noun
the practice of obsessively checking online news for updates, especially on social media feeds, with the expectation that the news will be bad, such that the feeling of dread from this negative expectation fuels a compulsion to continue looking for updates in a self-perpetuating cycle.
More about doomscrolling
Doomscrolling, one our top word trends in 2020, sounds something like the Doomsday Machine in Stanley Kubrick’s movie Dr. Strangelove (1964). (The phrases doomsday machine and doomsday bomb actually date to 1960.) Doomscrolling and its verb doomscroll are very recent neologisms, modeled on doomsday, the day of the Last Judgment, a belief common to Judaism, Christianity, Islam, and Zoroastrianism. Scroll and scrolling are used in their computer sense “moving text up, down, or across a display screen.”
how is doomscrolling used?
Doomscrolling will never actually stop the doom itself. Feeling informed can be a salve, but being overwhelmed by tragedy serves no purpose.
Another trick is to wear a rubber band around your hand while you are reading the news, and when you believe you are succumbing to doomscrolling, snap the rubber band against your wrist …