katzenjammer
See also: Katzenjammer
English
Alternative forms
- Katzenjammer
Etymology
Borrowed from German Katzenjammer (“hangover”, literally “the wailing of cats”); a determinative compound formed from Katze (“cat”) + -n- + Jammer (“wailing; lamentation”).
Pronunciation
- IPA(key): /ˈkætsənd͡ʒæmə(ɹ)/
Noun
katzenjammer (plural katzenjammers)
- A hangover.
- 1913 August, Jack London, John Barleycorn, New York, N.Y.: The Century Co., OCLC 264225:
- Also, I had found my way into the realm of the mind, and I was intellectually intoxicated. (Alas! as I was to learn at a later period, intellectual intoxication too, has its katzenjammer.)
- 1936, Henry Miller, “Burlesk”, in Black Spring, Paris: The Obelisk Press […], OCLC 459562537; republished New York, N.Y.: Grove Press, 1963, →ISBN, page 229:
- In those days a still-birth brought as high as ten dollars and after riding the shoot-the-chutes we always left a little stale beer for the morning because the finest thing in the world for Katzenjammer is a glass of stale beer.
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- Jitters; discord; confusion.
- 1919, O. Henry [pseudonym; William Sydney Porter], “Two Renegades”, in Roads of Destiny:
- To tell the truth, I've had an intimation from the State Department—unofficially, of course—that whenever a soldier of fortune demands a fleet of gunboats in a case of revolutionary katzenjammer, I should cut the cable, give him all the tobacco he wants, and after he's shot take his clothes, if they fit me, for part payment of my salary.
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- Depression.