- Today's Word
Twitterpated
[TWIT-er-pay-ted]
Definition
- (verb) The feeling of being completely enamored, infatuated, or overcome with romantic feelings. It often refers to the giddy, excited state one experiences when falling in love or developing a strong crush.
Example
As soon as he saw his high school sweetheart at the reunion, John became completely twitterpated, stumbling over his words and blushing like a teenager.
Fun Fact
The term “twitterpated” was popularized by the 1942 Disney animated film “Bambi.” In the movie, Friend Owl uses the word to describe the way animals behave when they fall in love during springtime. Despite its relatively recent coinage, the word has entered common usage, particularly in describing the early stages of romantic attraction. Its whimsical sound perfectly captures the fluttery, excited feeling of new love, making it a favorite among those describing romantic situations in a lighthearted way.
(adjective) Lacking substance, interest, or mature thought; naive and simplistic in a way that reveals inexperience.
The critic dismissed the debut novel as jejune — competently written, technically adequate, and utterly devoid of anything worth remembering.
Jejune derives from the Latin jejunus, meaning “fasting” or “empty” — literally describing a stomach that has not been fed. The same root gives us jejunum, the section of the small intestine named for its tendency to be found empty after death. It entered English in the 17th century carrying its literal sense of emptiness before acquiring its figurative meaning of something intellectually or creatively hollow — content that has the form of nourishment without any of the substance.