Word of the Day
: December 20, 2018frenetic
playWhat It Means
: marked by excitement, disorder, or anxiety-driven activity : frenzied, frantic
frenetic in Context
"For Youse and the roughly 90 employees who work at the store, the 5-mile move capped more than a half-year of planning, followed by a frenetic two days in which everything from the one store was transferred to the other." — Chad Umble, LancasterOnline.com, 22 Oct. 2018
"During his years as a sports broadcaster in Chicago, Adam Harris realized his volunteer work as a youth baseball coach often would provide a welcome break from the frenetic world of media." — Karen Ann Cullotta, The Chicago Tribune, 18 Oct. 2018
Did You Know?
When life gets frenetic, things can seem absolutely insane—at least that seems to be what folks in the Middle Ages thought. Frenetik, in Middle English, meant "insane." When the word no longer denoted stark raving madness, it conjured up fanatical zealots. Today, its seriousness has been downgraded to something more akin to "hectic." But if you trace frenetic back through Anglo-French and Latin, you'll find that it comes from Greek phrenitis, a term describing an inflammation of the brain. Phren, the Greek word for "mind," is a root you will recognize in schizophrenic. As for frenzied and frantic, they're not only synonyms of frenetic but relatives as well. Frantic comes from frenetik, and frenzied traces back to phrenitis.
Test Your Vocabulary with M-W Quizzes
Name That Synonym
Fill in the blanks to complete a synonym of frenetic: c _ r _ b _ n _ _ c.
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