Eggcorn Forum

LOL

I have never seen that before. Don’t know which is grosser, hahah.

As wonderful as David’s new additions to our diarrhea-reshaping inventory are, what really caught my eye was the (eye-catchingly boldfaced) “epizutic.” My spellchecker just autocorrected to “epizootic,” and that’s the obvious origin of the reshaping; according to the OED, the acorn means “Of diseases: Temporarily prevalent among animals; opposed to enzootic.” This may have entered the common vocabulary during the “Great Epizootic of 1872,” an epidemic of horse flu that infected nearly every horse in North America (it seems to have started in Ontario – thanks, guys!), and killed about one percent of the horse population. (The Wikipedia article on “Equine Influenza” has a rundown on the 1872 outbreak.) Contemporary accounts talked about outbreaks of sickness among humans, but medical historians insist the virus is unlikely to have been a “zoonose” that could jump species.

In any case, it looks like people in rural areas picked up the word to mean—more or less—flu-like symptoms in humans, but the citations below give a range of more colorful definitions. Like “the cold” and “the flu,” it usually takes the definite article, but it also shows up in a plural-looking form (maybe on the model of a word like “obstetrics”).

There’s a thread at Metafilter on this phrase that features none other than the esteemed LanguageHat, and he alludes to having written a post on the term at the Wordorigins site. But I can’t get the link to work. But here’s the Metafilter thing, with lots of testimonials: http://ask.metafilter.com/30653/Colorfu … ican-South Examples:

At urgent care, my suspicions were confirmed; I had what my Grandmother used to refer to as “the epizutic.” That was her word for “whatever is going around right now.” In this case, the epizutic happened to be a flu-like virus that made people heave up their toenails and generally feel drunk and stupid.
http://www.gather.com/viewArticle.actio … 4978034451

Dr. Sparling, my GP, had a surprise this morning when he saw me….I’m sick as a dawg! I got this ”*epizutic*” (my mother-in-law’s word for anything not yet diagnosed) and he was really cool about it.
http://kathleenmosko.com/wrap-up-visit- … ctitioner/

It’s Sunday morning, and I am nursing myself through an attack of the epizutics (a Shenandoah Valley term which covers any undiagnosed illness) – it’s probably the flu.
http://harpoagdec.blogspot.com/2011/01/ … anity.html

I had the “epizootics” (stomach flu) for about 2 days recently, and started CRAVING pizza.
http://www.idigmygarden.com/forums/arch … 0-p-2.html

I have always heard older people talking about having the “epizutics.” Well, we have definately had the epizutics for the past couple of weeks. Our whole family was sick with something that was sort of like the flu, Darren and I were both sick for about a full week, Mason and Adam both had double ear infections, Adam’s right eye swelled up as a result of him being sick.
http://growingupcooks.blogspot.com/2008 … utics.html

I’m a little late with this post due to a case of what my mother used the call the ‘epizutic’ – sometimes also known as the ‘creeping epizutic’.
http://mononadoug.blogspot.com/2008/02/ … -news.html

The proctologists amongst us advocate a diet of highly laxative content. Their entire focus in life is peristalsis. Stewed fruits, stool softeners, copious liquids hopefully containing dissolved fibre, constant preoccupation with fear of constipation, polyps, pre cancerous lesions, fecal impactions and gastroenterological epizutics. They are in the main of recent European descent and extremely anal retentive by nature, culture and heritage. They and their minions live in a hemoroidal fixation, expecting daily bowel movement inhibiting inflammation of their nether regions.
http://www.seamusmuldoon.com/The_Muldoo … gement.htm

On Wednesday morning I awoke with a flaming case of the crud, a/k/a the epizutic, the pharfalonis of the blowhole, the icky.
http://remsenhope-fearfullywonderfullym … ch-up.html

Sounds like the epizutic. First day you have it you are afraid you’re going to die. The second day you’re afraid you won’t.
http://forums.qrz.com/showthread.php?28 … t-It/page2

I’ve been suffering with the epizutical crud recently, and today I sound like Brenda Vaccarro after a carton of Lucky Strikes.
http://smedcards.wordpress.com/2011/01/ … 007-topps/

They’ll be overcome by the vapors at such strong language. “Well, I never!” they will declare, from Billo to Seanie to Fox & Friends. Everyone will be just shocked to hear such vile sentiments. Pearls will be clutched, fainting couches will be at a premium and epizutics for the heebie-jeebies will be de rigeur.
http://upload.democraticunderground.com … 89×9391186
[Here, “epizutics” seems to be a cure rather than an ailment.]

Half the family now has the barking-seal-sounding croup, had to deal with a two-year-old trapped in the body of a twelve year old who JUST! COULDN’T! GET! HER! HAIR! TO! DO! RIGHT!, had to get everyone to swallow bowls of mushy cereal (mushy only because of the time they spent arguing the finer points of “Uh-HUH!-UH-UHHH!DID!DID NOT!” rather than eating), had to roll wife out of the door on a gurney due to her debility with the barking-seal-sounding-croup (I believe hers has actually passed on into the epizutic), had to stop at the post office on the way out on my morning child delivery run to buy two three-cent stamps, which is always a pain because of the dodginess of the stamp machines, then had to swing by the gas and water works office to drop off my bill and keep the water and gas turned on another month, then get the kids dropped off at the appropriate schools (and this morning I was really wishing for a more conveniently located reform school), then dropped my mind into neutral along with everyone else travelling on I-59 South into Birmingham, got in and found out that not only had my just-mailed-in telephone bill contained a charge for receiving a call from a number in Vincennes, Indiana, said call was to a personal 800 number I never knew I had, and said call came from a fax machine, which required a call to Verizon Long Distance Customer Service to cancel the 800 number (still have to pay for the call, though, and the apologetic fellow on the other end punctuated his apology with “really-that’s not a lie,” which is a sad commentary on something) and finally I had to write this paragraph.
http://possumblog.blogspot.com/2002_07_ … chive.html

Last edited by patschwieterman (2011-06-22 13:11:50)

Great story, Pat. The epizutics may have spread far and wide through the dance hall tune from 1897 mentioned in your link, “I’ve got the ooperzootic”. References to ooperzootics can now be found from Scotland, New Zealand and especially Australia. I’d love to find the lyrics to that one. LanguageHat indicated that “epizootie” was another variant. I wonder if that is not a contribution from Quebec; epizootie is a French word for epizootic.

Just got back from the doctor’s office and can we all say “epizutie”? Cause that is what I call it. When I was little and had a nasty cold/cough/flu symptoms that’s what my grandmother called it.
http://www.disboards.com/showthread.php … 79&page=80

“The oopizootics”: ‘An undiagnosed complaint’ (C.J.Dennis, 1916): a joc. artificial word: late C.19–early 20. F.W.Thomas, in a letter to E.P., quoted the chorus of a popular song about 1890: ‘Father’s got ’em, Father’s got ’em,/He’s got the ooperzootics on the brain,/He’s running round the houses/ Without his shirt and trousis,/Father’s got ’em coming on again’.
A dictionary of slang and unconventional English

‘’Whenever anyone in my family was a bit off colour with an unknown bug,’’ writes Jan Bell, of East Hills, ‘’he/she was said to have ‘umpasootis in the umpygoriam’. A wonderful illness from which I, as a child, suffered often. It was one of my mother’s favourites, along with ‘In your eye and Paddy McGinty’s goat’
Column 8, Sidney Morning Herald, 07/13/2010

And from Jan Bell’s ‘’umpasootis in the umpygoriam’’ we move on to the family saying ‘’I’ve got the oopersootics in me parallelogram’’ from Helen Townes, of Greenwich, who is now intrigued whether one is a corruption of the other.
Column 8, 07/14/2010

John Curtin, of Northwood, suggests that a regional corruption may account for Helen Townes’ use of ‘’oopersootics’’ (Baffling words used by families, Column 8, since Tuesday). ‘’I grew up in nearby Hunters Hill where my father, a Macquarie Street physician, would dismiss any attempts by me or my seven younger brothers to take a sickie from school with, ‘You’ve only got a pain in your oopizootic!’
.
Tony Barker, of Carlingford, [...] writes: ‘My grandmother used to tell me I had ooperzootics in the pericorium, which might have been her corruption of pericranium.’’
Column 8, 07/15/2010

The song quoted is not the same as another I managed to track down, in Australia. The chorus of I’ve Got The Ooperzootic, sung by Johnny Danvers, words by Harry Hunter, Music by Edmund Forman, goes like this:

Oh! I’ve got the ooperzootic and I don’t know where I am,
I’ve got the ooperzootic in my parallelogram,
My heart is in a wobble and my head is in a whizz!
For I’ve got the ooperzootic and I don’t know where it is.
It may be in my finger and it may be in my thumb,
It may be in the corner of my pericardium!

Bruce:

The characteristics of intensive care include infusion of a large amount of solutions to attain an abundant diurrhesis of 100 ml per hour.
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/7618408

The way Popper appropriated Tarski’s work provides the groundwork to attitudes concerning definitions and argumentation such as his “negativism”, that is, his unwillingness to give positive definitions to theoretical concepts, as well as the related notion of diarrhesis (‘division’ or ‘distinction’)
http://www.flu.cas.cz/rethinkingpopper/ … niecki.doc

Last edited by David Bird (2011-08-05 14:40:45)

“Boolean” rhymes with “Julian” for me, and that seems to be the case, too, for the people doing the pronunciations at the Merriam-Webster pronouncing dictionary, as well as for those producing the American and British audio samples over at Wiktionary (the American sample there may have been lifted from MW—they sound similar). And “Boolean” is from the name of an English mathematician named George Boole, so the pronunciation I’m familiar with also makes sense to me etymologically.

Speaking of Wiktionary, the first footnote to the article there on “epizootic” cites a medical journal from 1873 that links the use of “epizootic” for human illnesses with the Great Epizootic of 1872; it also notes that people were using “zooty” as an abbreviation for the term within a year of the outbreak. In fact, all of the footnotes there are worth reading.