Feeling Twitterpated

Hello, you have A Way with Words.

Hi, this is Tina Marie calling from sunny San Diego. How are you?

Well, hello, San Diego, and welcome to the show. What can we do for you?

So, as long as I can remember, going back as far as maybe my high school years, and I’m not going to tell you when I was born, but I graduated sometime in the 80s, I’ve always been interested in this word that I’ve only heard one time, and that was in the movie Bambi, and the word is Twitterpated.

And I always used to describe that feeling of in between a crush and full-blown love. And it kind of relates to the work I do. So I thought, gosh, I would love to find out where the work came from.

So the word is Twitterpated.

Twitterpated, and it relates to the work you do?

Are you in the love business?

I am in the love business.

You’re like a matchmaker, right?

I’m a relationship and dating coach for women. So when I’m coaching them a lot, you know, meeting someone like, you know, higher quality people and falling in love, I kind of use that word to describe that space that they’re in.

And sometimes people are like, well, where does that word come from? So I thought, well, you guys are the wordsmiths. You’ll be able to tell us.

Yeah, the first time that we see Twitterpated seems to be in that movie Bambi, where the wise old Al, maybe you remember this part?

The wise old Al is talking about young love in springtime.

Yes, that’s my favorite part of the movie.

That’s what I’m like.

So that’s the first time the word is actually used in our.

Yeah, yeah.

The owl says you begin to get weak in the knees, your head’s in a whirl, and you feel light as a feather.

And before you know it, you’re walking on air.

And the other little animals go, gosh, that’s awful.

That sounds terrible because they’ve never heard of this before.

And then all of a sudden they all fall in love.

Remember that part?

So Twitter pated, we can break this word down.

It’s got some meaning stored in there, right?

Yeah.

For a long time, pate has meant head.

Like if you’re addle pated.

Well, baldpate you’ll find sometimes in kind of fancy speech.

Yeah, baldpate.

Yeah, yeah, but the Twitter part, it sounds sort of goofy and giddy, doesn’t it?

It sure does.

Twitterpated.

Yeah, it means besotted, right?

Yeah.

So to be a Twitter, you might find that word being used.

Exactly.

It has nothing to do with the online short messaging service.

No, no, nothing.

I was just wondering about that.

Like, wait a minute.

Well, no, the Twitter that we’re talking about goes back to the 1600s.

And it kind of refers to, I believe, to the kind of nutty craziness of twittering birds in the springtime.

Yeah, goofy and giddy.

And twitterpitted is sort of only the way that Walt Disney can do, you know, in a cartoon with a little fluttering and the music.

And the owl is, he’s kind of bombastic.

He uses big words and he pretends to be the big authority on everything, right?

Yes.

So he throws these words around and all the innocent white-eyed animals look at him in awe because he seems to be so learned.

In fact, he’s making a lot of it up as he goes.

Yeah, but it’s a great word.

That’s awesome with love.

Yeah, I mean, you can totally relate to it.

You must have Twitter-pated clients all the time.

Well, I hope so.

I mean, I love the word.

I love the way it feels when you say it, and it’s so descriptive.

So I’m surprised.

I’m happy to hear that it actually goes back even further.

Well, the Twitter part does.

Yeah, the Twitter part.

And the paid part, but it put together in 1942 in that Disney movie.

That is so cool.

Well, Tina Marie, thanks for calling today.

Good luck with the dating world out there.

Thank you. Good luck, and I appreciate so much you’re taking my call.

Our pleasure.

Bye-bye.

Bye-bye.

Twitter-pated.

Twitter-pated.

You know, even if you didn’t know the etymology of the word, it makes sense, right?

And he does it. You just did it. You did what the owl does in the movie. He flaps his little wings.

Yeah, I also like how the little characters Thumper and Flower the skunk and Bambi.

They’re all horrified by this notion, you know? What in the world?

Boy, there’s a lot of places we could go with the horrifying things that later become normal.

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