earworm
earworm: sostantivo numerabile
Scientists claim to have found a way to help anyone plagued by earworms – those annoying tunes that lodge themselves inside our heads and repeat on an endless loop.
Earworm attacks were more frequent – and lasted longer – for musicians and music lovers.
Chissà quante volte vi sarà capitato di avere un motivetto che vi frulla nella testa – che magari nemmeno vi piace – e di cui non riuscite a liberarvi? Non preoccupatevi, siete in buona compagnia: pare che il 98% della popolazione sia affetta da questi earworms, cioè i ‘tarli musicali’. Il nome azzeccatissimo ben descrive la natura insidiosa dell’earworm, che come un bachino vi entra nell’orecchio e si annida nel cervello finché un altro motivetto, altrettanto invadente, lo fa sloggiare. O, se siete fortunati, finché nella vostra testa ritorna a regnare il silenzio.
Origini del termine
Earworm viene dal tedesco Ohrwurm, ed è un calco, una tipologia di prestito linguistico. In inglese, altri esempi di calchi dal tedesco sono rainforest, homesickness e la parola loanword stessa (‘prestito linguistico’). Il termine earworm pare sia apparso per la prima volta in un romanzo di Desmond Bagley del 1978. Ma allora come li chiamavamo fino ad allora, questi fastidiosissimi ‘tarli’? Ah già, li chiamavamo ‘fastidiosi motivetti che ti si piazzano in testa e non ti lasciano in pace’. Allora ben venga la definizione tedesca, precisa e concisa.
earworm: countable noun
Scientists claim to have found a way to help anyone plagued by earworms – those annoying tunes that lodge themselves inside our heads and repeat on an endless loop.
Earworm attacks were more frequent – and lasted longer – for musicians and music lovers.
You know those annoying little snatches of songs that you can’t get out of your head, however hard you try? You almost certainly do, as it seems that 98% of us are afflicted by earworms, as such tunes are called. You hear a song being sung or played, or even just catch sight of the title, and it starts playing in your head, over and over again. The word brilliantly evokes the insidious nature of the earworm, since the offending bit of music enters your ear and lodges parasitically inside your brain until displaced by another equally annoying snippet or, preferably, by the sweet sound of silence.
Origin
Earworm comes from the German Ohrwurm. It is an example of a calque, which is a form of linguistic borrowing where the new word is translated literally from the original. Other examples of English calques from German are rainforest, homesickness, and loanword itself. The first recorded use of earworm is in a 1978 novel by Desmond Bagley, which raises the question: what on earth did English speakers call them before that? As far as I can recollect, we called them ‘annoying tunes that get stuck in your head and drive you crazy’. Thank goodness, then, for the concise precision of German.
