Tuesday Word: vernalagnia

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Spring has hit the southeastern US full force. There are bees a-bumbling, geese a-laying, swans a-swimming, hormones a-raging. Pollen is a-streaming into every facial orifice and a-coating every car. Students and workers are staring out of every window, desperately longing to be outside, forgetting that they typically spend their down-time maintaining their internet addictions and running errands, not frolicking in fields of flowers.

Nevertheless, the cold seems to have broken, and there's something going around, in addition to what I hear is a very intense and nasty yet mercifully brief stomach bug: vernalagnia! It's just another word for spring fever, whether a romantic, dreamy mood brought on by spring or a seasonal increase in sexual desire.

While I encountered both definitions in abundance during my research, the origins of vernalagnia seem more in line with the latter one, with verna, meaning "of spring," synonymous with vernal, and -lagnia, meaning "lust." I like to imagine a frustrated high school teacher hurling it at their students: You were my best-behaved class! Now you're just a bunch of vernalagniacs!