How Manic Arrived in English

Hello, you have A Way with Words.

Hi, hello. My name is Ronville Birdie, calling from Jacksonville, Florida.

Welcome to the show, Ronville.

Well, I’m a child of the 70s, I guess.

And, you know, growing up, I always had this song, Manic Monday.

And as I grew older, I became a mental health therapist.

And being around bipolar individuals, you’ll hear the term, someone is manic.

And I always wonder, like, where did this come from?

And how would you describe that?

Well, from a mental health standpoint, it’s someone that’s having risky behaviors, danger to themselves.

They’re somewhat frantic.

It’s just like being over-anxious or being over-zealous in everything they do.

They may clean a lot.

They may start doing a lot of risky or being promiscuous or different things like that to where they’re having a manic episode.

Yeah, and it’s interesting too, isn’t it, that manic is both used in a clinical setting, but it’s also in the general population.

Those of us who aren’t therapists sometimes refer to someone as manic.

Or like you said, the song Manic Monday, just another Manic Monday, right?

Yes, I mean, they had me go look up at that video, and I was like, okay, yeah, I can’t really figure out on the video where it comes from.

Okay, well, let’s see if we can unpack this word.

Manic comes from the old word mania, which goes back to the ancient Greek word mania, which means a madness or a frenzy.

So you might talk about the mania of soldiers rushing into battle in antiquity or or also somebody who is mad, who is just raging and furious.

And so it has to do with that same kind of frenetic energy and rapid speech.

And sometimes you loosely connected thoughts and and delusions of grandeur.

And in the 14th century, it was used that way in English, mania, to describe that kind of behavior.

And, of course, we also get the word maniac from that.

All those words go back to an extremely ancient root that may be related to words like mind and mental.

And it’s also extended to words like megalomania and kleptomania and nymphomania.

And those are pathological conditions.

But then we also have, for example, Beatlemania, right?

Yes, yes, yes.

Okay.

So it’s a very old word.

That makes lots of sense.

Thank you guys for clearing that up for me.

Sure thing.

Thank you, Ronville.

Take care of yourself.

Be well.

Call us again sometime.

All righty.

Bye-bye.

Bye-bye.

Bye-bye.

Martha and I are here to help.

You can find a dozen ways to reach us on our website at waywordradio.org.

Or send us an email today, right now, to words@waywordradio.org.