August 25, 2006

FORTUNATELY, AS STRAIGHT WHITE MALES WE'RE IMMUNE:

tarantism (Word a Day, 8/25/06)

(TAR-uhn-tiz-uhm) noun

An uncontrollable urge to dance.

[After Taranto, a town in southern Italy where this phenomenon was experienced during the 15-17th centuries. It's not clear whether tarantism was the symptom of a spider's bite or its cure, or it may have been just a pretext to dodge a prohibition against dancing. The names of the dance tarantella and the spider tarantula are both derived from the same place.]

Posted by Orrin Judd at August 25, 2006 8:19 AM
Comments

What's the word for an uncontrollable urge to sit in front of a screen and type in inanities?

Posted by: Raoul Ortega at August 25, 2006 11:30 AM

Nativism.

Posted by: oj at August 25, 2006 11:36 AM

Law school debt.

Posted by: Random Lawyer at August 25, 2006 1:11 PM

Which would seem to make you a coyote.

(These obsessions with certain subjects are getting to the point where large sums of insurance company money needs to be paid for some professional quackery to pretend to address them.)

Posted by: Raoul Ortega at August 25, 2006 1:21 PM

Yes, I've been a coyote down in Texas, though the Northern border is so porous there's no call for it here.

Kind of queer to troll under a pseudonym and refer to others as obsessed, no?

Posted by: oj at August 25, 2006 1:38 PM
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