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jimcoler
Posted: Jul 02, 2009 06:06 PM
Hysterical or Historical
Well, U-man got me onto the topic and I figured I'd share some of the research I found on Hysterical and Historical.

his?tor?i?cal??/h??st?r?k?l, -?st?r-/ Show Spelled Pronunciation [hi-stawr-i-kuhl, -stor-]

–adjective
1. of, pertaining to, treating, or characteristic of history or past events: historical records; historical research.
2. based on or reconstructed from an event, custom, style, etc., in the past: a historical reenactment of the battle of Gettysburg.
3. having once existed or lived in the real world, as opposed to being part of legend or fiction or as distinguished from religious belief: to doubt that a historical Camelot ever existed; a theologian's study of the historical Jesus.
4. narrated or mentioned in history; belonging to the past.
5. noting or pertaining to analysis based on a comparison among several periods of development of a phenomenon, as in language or economics.


Hysteria, in its colloquial use, describes a state of mind, one of unmanageable fear or emotional excesses. The fear is often caused by multiple events in one's past that involved some sort of severe conflict; the fear can be centered on a body part or most commonly on an imagined problem with that body part (disease is a common complaint. And see also Body dysmorphic disorder and Hypochondriasis. People who are "hysterical" often lose self-control due to the overwhelming fear.

Mass hysteria
The term also occurs in the phrase mass hysteria to describe mass public near-panic reactions. It is commonly applied to the waves of popular medical problems that "everyone gets" in response to news articles.
A similar usage refers to any sort of "public wave" phenomenon, and has been used to describe the periodic widespread reappearance and public interest in UFO reports, crop circles, and similar examples. Also, when information, real or fake, becomes misinterpreted but believed, e.g. ****** panic.
Posted: Jul 04, 2009 06:57 AM
,,,i second that emotion....

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