noun
the condition of having an unusually vivid or precise memory.
Hypermnesia, a medical or psychological term meaning 鈥渢he condition of having an unusually vivid or precise memory,鈥 is composed of the familiar prefix hyper-, which usually implies excess or exaggeration, the Greek noun 尘苍锚蝉颈蝉 鈥渕emory,鈥 and the Greek abstract noun suffix –ia. Hypermnesia entered English in the late 19th century.
Psychologists have investigated some persons with exceptional memories 鈥 said to exhibit 鈥hypermnesia鈥. The most famous of these was a Russian, code-named 鈥淪鈥, who could recall long random series of numbers or words without error, many years later.
This sharpened memory is called hypermnesia. A frequent experience in dreaming is a hypermnesia with regard to childhood scenes.
The original meaning of bromide was 鈥渁 chemical compound of two elements: bromine and a second element, such as potassium or sodium.鈥 Potassium bromide and sodium bromide are used in medicine as sedatives and anticonvulsants. The extended use of bromide, 鈥減latitude or trite saying鈥 (from its sedative effect), was originally an Americanism, first appearing in print in the early 20th century. Bromide entered English in the first half of the 19th century.
the work is its own reward. That may sound like just another bromide, but Gilbert鈥檚 love of creativity is infectious ….
I鈥檓 intrigued by the way in which his political success … contradicts bromides about the importance, professionally, of making friends and using honey instead of vinegar.
adjective
Slang.
restless or frantic because of confinement, routine, etc.: I was stir-crazy after just two months of keeping house.
Feeling a little stir-crazy? Unpleasant though it may be, the restlessness that this familiar term calls to mind today is a far cry from the state of literal imprisonment it named upon entering English. A 1908 dictionary of unsavory terms called Criminal Slang听诲别蹿颈苍别诲 stir-crazy (noun) as聽“a man whose mind has become affected by serving long sentences.” By the mid-1900s, stir-crazy was being used as an adjective to mean “mentally ill because of long imprisonment.” The stir in stir-crazy does not suggest movement or agitation, as one might presume based the verb stir “to move around briskly” or “to be emotionally affected”; here, stir is a slang term for prison. The origin of stir is uncertain, but some sources suggest it as a shortening of the Romani noun sturiben “prison” or verb staripen “to imprison”; others connect it to the Start, a nickname for the Newgate prison in London, which later broadened to mean prison more generally.
By now, let’s聽hope you鈥檙e safely ensconced at home鈥攇oing聽a little stir-crazy, perhaps, but doing your part to 鈥渇latten the curve.鈥
You may be trying to work from home with your stir-crazy children, and聽all your previous rules about screen time聽may need to get tossed.