Do you ever, dear reader, just as you're falling asleep, suddenly twitch and wake up? For no reason? I do. It's a terribly common phenomenon; and there is, dear reader, a name for it. It is a myoclonic jerk.The reason I like myoclonic jerk is not simply that it gives a name to the nameless, but that it sounds like a term of abuse. 'That guy', I can rant, 'is a myoclonic jerk.'
It wouldn't matter that the sentence would be meaningless, because it would sound right.
Incidentally, if you ever experience a myoclonic jerk while you're not falling asleep, you are, in the words of doctor friend of mine, "absolutely fucked".
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Next time this happens to me, and it does all the time, I will comfort myself with the fact that it has a posh name. With me, until I stopped driving, it was often combined with the feeling that I just crashed into a wall. You can see why I gave up driving ...
ReplyDeleteI found this term in Bill Bryson's book The Mother Tongue, and it became a buzzword in my etymology class this summer (to which I read a couple of your posts, about tanks and brackets). There was a kid who kept nodding off in class, whom I referred to as a "myoclonic jerk." I mentioned the word in my comment for that kid, only to learn that the Academic Dean had a son who suffered from myoclonic jerks, and was therefore not amused.
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