51吃瓜 of the Day
antediluvian
adjective
very old, old-fashioned, or out of date; antiquated.
More about antediluvian
Antediluvian 鈥渙ccurring before the biblical Flood (in Genesis); very old, old-fashioned, or out of date,鈥� comes from the Latin preposition and prefix ante, ante– 鈥渂efore鈥� (naturalized in English) and the noun 诲墨濒耻惫颈耻尘 鈥渇lood, deluge, inundation,鈥� a derivative of the verb 诲墨濒耻别谤别 鈥渢o dissolve and wash away鈥� (诲墨濒奴迟耻蝉, the past participle of 诲墨濒耻别谤别, 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 鈥渧ery old, old-fashioned, out of date鈥� 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.
antediluvian
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