When the Term “Cabin Fever” First Became Popular

Hello, you have A Way with Words.

Hey, this is Juan. I’m calling from Dallas.

I had a question about the word or phrase cabin fever.

So I’m a Dallas native, Texas born and raised. Here down south, we don’t necessarily stay in cabins for too long. It’s really hot down here. And I was wondering if that was just like, you know, Colorado thing, Iraqi thing. You know, people who stay in colder weather, you know, if they get stuck in a cabin for too long or where did that phrase originate from or what does it mean? Cabin fever.

Well, it’s not just about cabins. It’s about any place that you might stay indoors for too long. So you could even get cabin fever in an air-conditioned hotel room. We do know something about the origin of the term if you’re interested.

Yeah, for sure. I’d be interested in that.

Yeah, there was a book published in 1918 by a woman whose name was Bertha Muzzy Sinclair. She was writing under this pen name, B.M. Bauer, and it was titled Cabin Fever and is actually about cabin fever. And in the beginning of the book, she describes the whole book is about this notion that you could become so bored with life that you would kind of lash out and do insane things. And she says, just as a body fed too long upon meat becomes a prey to that horrid disease called scurvy, so the mind fed too long upon monotony succumbs to the insidious mental ailment which the West calls cabin fever.

So that West there, she capitalizes, and she’s referring to people up in the mountains. So she’s referring to prospectors and ranchers and trappers and frontiersmen and people, lumberjacks, people cutting timber, that sort of thing. And she’s referring to people who are trapped in the hills during the winter, sometimes too to a cabin. So it’s just about the utter monotony in the seasons where you can’t do anything except stare your companions in the eyes. There’s nothing to do except wait for the spring, you know.

Oh, okay.

But anyone could get cabin fever. It’s just about being trapped in one space for too long.

Oh, okay. That makes sense.

There are other names for it. You ever heard of being stir-crazy?

No, I haven’t.

So stir is old slang for jail, sometimes known as jail fever, and then shanty fever or being shack-wacky.

Shack-wacky.

I haven’t heard that one.

Shack-wacky, yeah. And then there’s the opposite, too, which is going a little nutty, well, hill nutty, for being out in the outdoors too long. Hill nutty or steaky or bushy or bushed. These are all for just being out in the wilderness way too long, so you’re too disconnected from civilization or the urban environment.

Huh.

Steaky. How are you spelling that?

S-T-A-K-E-Y. Steaky.

Yeah.

Cool. Or bushy, bushed, hill nutty. Didn’t know this word. Anyway, so there you go. How about that one?

Awesome. I learned a lot today. I appreciate that.

Yeah, thanks for your call. Appreciate it.

All right. Have a good one, guys.

Thank you.

You too.

Bye-bye.

Some people think that cabin fever means cabins on ships, but we don’t have any evidence of that at all.

Yeah, I’m not surprised. So they think it’s about being aboard a ship for too long, which you certainly can get stir-crazy or cabin fever, but we have no evidence that it comes from ships at all.

Sure, sure. I can just see being laid up in a cabin for months, you know, in those harsh winters.

Oh, my gosh. Some of the dictionaries of Ramon Adams of Words of the West, he talks about when two or more cowboys are snowed in at a line camp and forced to spend so much time in each other’s company that they become hostile to each other. They are said to get cabin fever. You just kind of like pick your corner and just give each other the evil eye.

No Wi-Fi.

No Wi-Fi. What a horrible thought. It’s whatever supplies you’ve laid in for the winter in each other’s company, and that’s it.

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