A Sneeze that Won’t Come

You’re listening to A Way with Words, the show about language and how we use it. I’m Grant Barrett.

And I’m Martha Barnette. You know that feeling when you’re going to sneeze and you’re going to sneeze and you’re going to sneeze and then you don’t?

Yes, I do know that feeling.

Well, our listener Carissa Bell asked us that question on Twitter. Is there a term for that?

And the best we could come up with, Grant, was arrested sternutation.

Right, yeah. That works, right?

I think it does. Genutation in English means sneezing. It comes from a Latin word that also gives us the word in Spanish and French and Italian for sneeze. And I think it works.

Yeah, that’s a really good one.

Yeah.

There are a lot of terms for this on Urban Dictionary for what that’s worth. But the one I liked best was sneeze freeze.

Sneeze freeze.

That works, right?

It’s like brain freeze, sneeze freeze. I like that.

But we’ve all had that feeling. The body wants to expel, but the body cannot expel.

Well, I have many more words about sneezing that I want to discuss later in the show, so stay tuned.

We’re talking about language here, words and how we use them.

So call us, 877-929-9673, or send an email to words@waywordradio.org.