[Dixielandjazz] Earworms - For those who get a tune stuck in their head (slightly off topic)

[david richoux]

For those who get a tune stuck in their head:

Dave Richoux
----------------------------------------

A recent study by the University of Cincinnati looked at the affliction,
which the author, James Kellaris, calls earworms from the German word
ohrwurm. The ear part is obvious, but the worm part is not incidental.
Dr. Kellaris, a consumer psychologist, says it conveys the parasitic
nature of the unending tunes, which lodge too deep in the mental
continuum to be easily ousted.

More at

http://snurl.com/214f

Word Spy, an excellent source of information on new words, has an entry
for this:

http://www.wordspy.com/words/earworm.asp

Word Spy entries
always include an 'earliest citation': in this case, 'Howard Rheingold,
"Untranslatable words," The Whole Earth Review, December 22, 1987'. This
article was also in his 1988 book *There's a Word for It*, also an
excellent read. 'Ear worm' appears there only as a translation for
'Ohrwurm', but it's easy to see someone (non-German) reading the book
and adopting the loan-translation.

Also from that entry: 'An earworm is also sometimes called a *sticky
tune*. Subscriber Isa Mara Lando of Brazil tells me that in Portuguese
they call it *chiclete de ouvido*, or *ear chewing gum*. Not to be
confused with bubble-gum music. Google has about 11 distinct non-English
hits for the Portuguese term.
>