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Never heard epizudic. When I was growing up in Wisconsin, we called it the green apple quick step. There's probably more euphemisms for this phenomenon than there are for sex.
OK, as so often happens on this forum, I had to check what I just said. Tried to find "the word with the most euphemisms" in an online search. Nothing definitive, but people in this forum claims it's either excretion, homosexual or masturbation.
And this blog suggests the top three are kill, death, and restroom.
If you include all versions of English, finding a single "winner" would seem to be a daunting task.
The word is actually epizootic (more accurately, epizoötic, with the two dots to show that the O's are pronounced separately, as ep-ee-zoh-AHT-ick), and was discussed on the show a few years ago, when it was mentioned that it was used in an episode of The Beverly Hillbillies, and on a more recent show a sound clip of that episode was played.
The word is related by analogy to epidemic ("widespread among people") and literally means a disease widespread among animals. (A pandemic is a similar condition suffered by all people, and a panzoötic would be one affecting all animals.)
The word is actually epizootic (more accurately, epizoötic, with the two dots to show that the O's are pronounced separately, as ep-ee-zoh-AHT-ick)
No doubt that's the source for "epizudic" with only the phonetic mispronunciation surviving in print. Didn't occur to me until you pointed that out. There's a similar mispronunciation of the constellation Boötes, even among experienced amateur astronomers.
Martha Barnette
Grant Barrett
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