earworm
Definition from Wiktionary, the free dictionary
Contents |
[edit] English
[edit] Etymology
A calque of German Ohrwurm (“earwig”).
[edit] Pronunciation
[edit] Noun
earworm (plural earworms)
- A tune that is stuck in one's head, especially as unwanted or repetitive.
- 2005, Kim Cooper, David Smay editor, Lost in the Grooves: Scram's Capricious Guide to the Music You Missed[1], Routledge, ISBN 9780415969987, Klymaxx - Meeting in the Ladies Room, page 132:
- The chorus spawned an earworm so potent that women still mutter it as they exit for a bathroom break twenty years later.
- 2005, Brain Stableford, Kiss the Goat[2], Wildside Press, ISBN 9780809544851, Chapter Two, page 15-16:
- “Yeah, well,” he said, weakly. “Sometimes tunes do that.” […] ¶ “I don't mean that I heard it once before and caught an earworm.”
- 2009, Steve Goodman, “1971: The Earworm”, in Sonic Warfare: Sound, Affect, and the Ecology of Fear[3], MIT Press, ISBN 9780262013475, page 147:
- A commonly cited species within memetics, the earworm is the catchy tube that you cannot get out of your head, the vocal refrain, the infectious rhythm or the addictive riff
- 2005, Kim Cooper, David Smay editor, Lost in the Grooves: Scram's Capricious Guide to the Music You Missed[1], Routledge, ISBN 9780415969987, Klymaxx - Meeting in the Ladies Room, page 132:
