ringxiety
n.— «What they are hearing is a barely discernable sound—perhaps chimes, a faint trill or an electronic bleat—that they mistake for the ringtone of their cellphone, which isn’t ringing. This audio illusion—called phantom phone rings or, more whimsically, ringxiety or fauxcellarm—has emerged recently as an Internet discussion topic and has become a new reason for people to either bemoan the techno-saturation of modern life or question their sanity.» —“I Hear Ringing and There’s No One There. I Wonder Why” by Brenda Goodman New York Times May 4, 2006. (source: Double-Tongued Dictionary)
Further reading
It was a dark and stormy night. So begins the long and increasingly convoluted prose of Edwards Bulwer-Lytton’s best-known novel. Today the annual Bulwer-Lytton Contest asks contestants for fanciful first sentences that are similarly...
Enthusiastic book recommendations! Martha’s savoring the biography of Alexander von Humboldt, the 19th-century explorer, polymath, and naturalist who revolutionized our understanding of nature and predicted the effects of human activity on...