COLLYWOBBLES (Dr. Goodword is back)

[Dr. Goodword]

• collywobbles •

Pronunciation: kah-li-wah-bêlz • Hear it!

Part of Speech: Noun, plural

Meaning: Queasiness caused by anxiety, fear, or anticipation; butterflies in the stomach.

Notes: Collywobbles is out there pretty much on its own, without any derivational relatives. It currently requires a plural verb (collywobbles are) although in the past it has been used in the singular to refer to actual stomach pain.

In Play: Now we have a name for those butterflies we get in our stomach that are let in by anxiety: "Gosh, just looking at Sue St. Marie gives me the collywobbles." Sometimes this word simply refers to the anxiety itself: "My granddaughter got the collywobbles when she saw Santa Claus at the mall and never did tell him what she wanted for Christmas."

Word History: Today's Good Word is a compound made up of colic + wobble + -s, a suffix associated with ailments (measles, mumps, blues). Colic was borrowed from Old French colique, the remnant of Latin colica (passio) "colonic (suffering)", feminine of colicus "of the colon". Colicus came from kolikos, the Greek adjective from kolon "colon". Wobble is an authentic English word, inherited from a Germanic family of words that includes web, waffle and weave.

[sluggo]

The Doctor is In! Welcome back.

[gailr]

This word was used in the Wachowski's version of Vendetta.

Inspector Stone: I came when they opened it. Gave me the collywobbles. ... Still does.

Sorry, Alan. For I did backslide and did turn away mine eyes from the Authorized Version and did slink away to the cinemas, despite what they've done unto to you in the past...and lo! I did like it.

[Perry]

Well, I suppose that the word does sound classier than heebie jeebies.

[Stargzer]

Well, I suppose that the word does sound classier than heebie jeebies.
_________________
"...or do I misconstrue?" ODIM for short. Uttered by David Gaynes too many times to put a date to it.

YYMIT (Yes, You Misconstrue, I Think)

Collywobbles is " ... (the) Queasiness caused by anxiety, fear, or anticipation; butterflies in the stomach. "

Heebie Jeebies is the feeling of fear that gives one the collywobbles

heebie-jeebies

SYLLABICATION: hee·bie-jee·bies
PRONUNCIATION: hēbē-jēbēz
PLURAL NOUN: Slang A feeling of uneasiness or nervousness; the jitters.
ETYMOLOGY: Coined by William De Beck (1890–1942), American cartoonist, in his comic strip Barney Google.

The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition. Copyright © 2000 by Houghton Mifflin Company. Published by the Houghton Mifflin Company. All rights reserved.

Barney Google

Barney Google and Snuffy Smith, originally Barney Google, is a long-running American comic strip created in 1919 by Billy De Beck. The strip inspired the popular 1920s song, "Barney Google (With the Goo-Goo-Googly Eyes)," with lyrics by Billy Rose.

When the strip began, its title character, a little fellow with big eyes, was a sportsman involved in horse racing and boxing.

... Barney Google appears in 21 countries and 11 languages. It is credited with introducing several slang phrases, including "sweet mama," "horsefeathers," "heebie-jeebies," and "hotsie-totsie." In 1995, the strip was one of 20 included in the Comic Strip Classics series of commemorative US postage stamps.

Wikipedia on a homonym whose name I suspect might have been influenced by Barney Google.

Googol is the large number 10[sup]100[/sup], that is, the digit 1 followed by one hundred zeros (in decimal representation). The term was coined in 1920 by nine-year-old Milton Sirotta (1911–1981), nephew of American mathematician Edward Kasner. Kasner popularized the concept in his book Mathematics and the Imagination (1940).

And finally, for completeness, Google:

The World-Wide Web search engine that indexes the greatest number of web pages - over two billion by December 2001 and provides a free service that searches this index in less than a second.

The site's name is apparently derived from "googol", but note the difference in spelling.

The "Google" spelling is also used in "The Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy" by Douglas Adams, in which one of Deep Thought's designers asks, "And are you not," said Fook, leaning anxiously foward, "a greater analyst than the Googleplex Star Thinker in the Seventh Galaxy of Light and Ingenuity which can calculate the trajectory of every single dust particle throughout a five-week Dangrabad Beta sand blizzard?"

Somehow, I suspect we have Douglas Adams to thank for the company's name.

" ... thanks for all the fish!"

[Perry]

Collywobbles is " ... (the) Queasiness caused by anxiety, fear, or anticipation; butterflies in the stomach. "

Heebie Jeebies is the feeling of fear that gives one the collywobbles

Well the fear of mistaking the heebie jeebies for collywobbles is givng me the heebie jeebies, which might lead to collywo.... Well you get what I mean.

Thanks Gzer.

[Dr. Goodword]

My impression is that the hebbie-jeebies are a much stronger reaction than the collywobbles. In my vocabulary, the heebie-jeebies imply at least the possibiliy of physically trembling. Anyone else have that sense of the words?

[Stargzer]

Yes, since one definition is the jitters.

[sluggo]

"Heebie Jeebies" as done by Louis Armstrong used to be (erroneously) credited as the source of Louie 'inventing' scat singing. Also in the Basin Street Sheiks' older repertoire.