dementia americana
n.— «When Thaw’s attorney made the case that his client had been acting out of a condition he termed dementia Americana—a legitimate rage triggered by the desecration of a man’s home—a powerful nexus of concerns with national identity, patriarchy, class, and the public sphere emerged. Meanwhile (and most interestingly), Evelyn Nesbit Thaw became “the first person to capitalize on a scandal to become a film star.”» —“Headline Hollywood” Film Quarterly Summer, 2002. (source: Double-Tongued Dictionary)
Further reading
What if, instead of being an inanimate object, a dictionary were alive? That’s the idea behind a lavishly illustrated new children’s book called The Dictionary Story (Bookshop|Amazon) by Oliver Jeffers and Sam Winston. This is part of a...
David says that when he was growing up in Akron, Ohio, his family referred to the grassy area between the sidewalk and street as the devil strip. He’s since moved to Nashville, Tennessee, where he doesn’t hear that term. There are lots...