This week's theme: reduplicatives.
jimjams (JIM-jams) noun
1. Extreme nervousness; jitters
2. Delirium tremens: tremors and hallucinations caused by
withdrawal from alcohol.
[Perhaps a reduplicative of jam.]
Today's word in Visual Thesaurus: http://visualthesaurus.com/?w1=jimjams
-Anu Garg (garg wordsmith.org)
"I didn't feel attached in any way to my brothers and sisters. The very
word siblings gives me the jimjams: it suggests something small and
helpless, almost pathetic."
Stephen Zanichkowsky; Fourteen; The Atlantic (Boston); Sep 2000.
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A mass of Latin words falls upon the facts like soft snow, blurring the
outline and covering up all the details. The great enemy of clear language
is insincerity. When there is a gap between one's real and one's declared
aims, one turns as it were instinctively to long words and exhausted
idioms, like a cuttlefish spurting out ink. In our age there is no such
thing as "keeping out of politics". All issues are political issues, and
politics itself is a mass of lies, evasions, folly, hatred, and
schizophrenia. When the general atmosphere is bad, language must suffer.
-George Orwell, writer (1903-1950)
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Pronunciation:
http://wordsmith.org/words/jimjams.wav
http://wordsmith.org/words/jimjams.ram
Permalink: http://wordsmith.org/words/jimjams.html
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