That is, a person who's crazy for sonnets.
Are words constructed out of "-maniac" really deserving of dictionary entries? Perhaps, in the case of "sonnettomaniac," it was valuable to nudge people to spell it the way it was spelled in the time when people really were sonnettomaniacs.
The OED proffers a quote from 2011: "After the decline of the previous century's 'sonnettomania,' the popularity of the sonnet would never scale such lofty heights again in the course of the twentieth century."
Posts
19 comments:
"The wildlife rescue said it is working on giving her back to Gardner and Fishlock so she can transition from the life of a gritty survivor back into a pet princess....."
What the hell is that supposed to mean? Give me my damn dog back - now.
Elizabeth Barrett Browning had sonnettorrhea.
@Aggie -- wrong thread. Go one down.
A word we really need would be something like freeformophrenia, the psychologically inability to use rhyme or meter.
It's no worse than labeling any of the things your political opponents oppose as "[N]-phobic". Transphobic, homophobic, vaccination-phobic, Islamophobic, ...
I don't think this word is likely to make it all the way to "Word of the Year," but with all the chemicals in the food and water, there may be more sonettomanics out there than one would expect.
There are plenty of "one-off" coinages. Time magazine used to create portmanteau words like "cinemactor." Do they all deserve an entry in the dictionary if they didn't catch on?
"Mania" words come and go with the passing "manias": Beatlemania, Trudeaumania, Obamamania. You need a vowel in the middle, though: Lisztomania has lasted. Swiftmania won't go very far.
The problem is, though, that someone's going to psychopathologize it, unreasonably so. You are no longer a fan, you are a fanatic. A hobby equals an obsessive fixation. Jesus Freaks are literally Freaks that must be dealt with. You are no longer allowed to like anything.
I like how the French call someone an "x-mane" instead of an "x-maniac." We do this for some types of fandom: bibliomane, balletomane. We really should adopt this form more often, since it sounds less like a mental illness.
JSM
Swiftmania won't last because Swifties describes them better with a shorter word.
Then the opposite of a transphobe could be a transmane.
Or is that word taken, referring to the wig a lioness wears when she frees her inner lion?
JSM
I'm more of a punomaniac. And, no, that doesn't mean that I'm crazy about all things Carthaginian.
Shall I compare thee to a Summer's day
Thou art iambic and pentameter
Rough winds do shake the darling buds of May
Three quatrains and one couplet are better
Italian da Lentini gave birth
To a form of verse that one should not mock
It has been celebrated round the Earth
But our William Shakespeare made it rock
Upon Althouse’s Page
Where wisdom wakes and wanders through the day,
A thousand voices gather, clash, and blend;
Sharp truths and subtleties in bright array,
Each post a spark that bids the mind ascend.
Her careful hand, with understated grace,
Unfolds the tangled thread of news and art;
She carves a quiet, fiercely lucid space,
Where reason's fire refines the public heart.
No dogma reigns within her measured halls—
The mind’s delight and irony run free;
Each voice may rise, but careful reason calls
The soul to weigh its own sincerity.
O forum bright! In tangled times you stand,
A torch of thought, held steady in one hand.
Writing a fine sonnet is to post-modernist blank verse doggerel as an academic realist painting by Bouguereau is to a banana taped to the wall in a post-modernist art museum.
I like how the French call someone an "x-mane" instead of an "x-maniac."
The canonical example, of course, being Le Pétomane.
Hassayamper - Le Petomane. Yes!
JSM
"Are words constructed out of "-maniac" really deserving of dictionary entries? "
About as much as words constructed out of "___ phobe".
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