51吃瓜 of the Day
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鈥檚 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 鈥渕oving text up, down, or across a display screen.鈥�
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 …
doomscrolling
hebetude
noun
the state of being dull; lethargy.
More about hebetude
Hebetude comes straight from the Late Latin noun 丑别产别迟奴诲艒, a derivative of the adjective hebes (inflectional stem hebet-) 鈥渂lunt, dull (physical or mental), obtuse (angle or person).鈥� 贬别产别迟奴诲艒 first appears in the Commentary on the 鈥淒ream of Scipio鈥� (ca. a.d. 430) by the pagan author Macrobius. Macrobius鈥� Commentary was so popular and influential in late antiquity and the Middle Ages and so important and invaluable a source for Neoplatonic philosophy that its numerous manuscripts cannot be sorted into families. Hebes has no known etymology; scholars cannot even blame hebes on the Etruscans (their usual go-to for strange Latin words). Hebetude entered English in the first half of the 17th century.
how is hebetude used?
Why did I take up Latin at this late age? I did so not only to fight off hebetude but also to avoid becoming my mother.
Urban hebetude, he discovers, can be cured at the Jamaica Bay Wildlife Refuge.
hebetude
beneficence
noun
the doing of good; active goodness or kindness; charity.
More about beneficence
Beneficence 鈥渁ctive goodness or kindness; charity,鈥� comes via French 产茅苍茅蹿颈肠别苍肠别 from Latin beneficentia 鈥渒indness, kind treatment of others,鈥� a derivative of the adjective beneficus 鈥済enerous, liberal, kind.鈥� Beneficus is a compound composed of the adverb and prefix bene, bene– 鈥渨ell,鈥� a derivative of the adjective bonus 鈥済ood鈥� (and completely naturalized in English), and the combining form –ficus (English –fic) 鈥渕aking, producing鈥� (as in honorific, pacific) a derivative of the all-purpose, overworked verb facere 鈥渢o do, make, construct.鈥� Beneficence entered English in the early 15th century.
how is beneficence used?
My general misery was alleviated by what felt like a measure of Victorian beneficence: I had the run of the house鈥檚 library.
Better still would be the inculcation into all our moral considerations of beneficence as an internal good rather than an ethical calculation. Be good for goodness’ sake.
beneficence