Wednesday, January 22, 2025

Lunatic

This one is going to be a bit weird, but bear with me. I'm feeling a bit ridiculous, so I'll pass it along. 

Lunatic is a term that now means someone insane, but it actually was created as a description of someone who is 'moon crazy'. (Using today's terms for things, you could call anyone that really loves the moon a lunatic, but I'll leave that one alone for now.)

(This picture is from the Griffith Observatory link below, in case anyone forgot the phases of the moon or what the moon looks like.)

The theory was that the phase of the moon influenced people a lot and they would get sick on full moons (or possibly new moons, or even possibly both, depending on the time and place and who was doing the deciding), or would go crazy then. A pair of examples for this would be epileptics, which I'm not entirely certain of the reasoning behind, or a female who has a strong reaction to her period, such as crabbiness or feeling sick. The term could probably be applied to pretty much any cyclic disorder. 

In modern times, we tend to just think of someone being a lunatic if they're crazy, but...it could easily tie into the theory that everyone goes a bit crazy during full moons and we're more prone to commit crimes or something. And possibly werewolves. Have enough angry women on a full moon night and I can see someone claiming they turn into rabid beasts who will tear people apart and eat their weight in sugar and chocolate. The werewolf thing makes more sense to me now. 

So, all things said and done, try to remember this next time someone decides they want to do something weird on a full moon night and maybe distract them from their acts of lunacy with a quick history of the term. If you want more, I've got sources below you can check. 


Sources:

English Usage Stack Exchange-- Lunatic

Science Friday-- Why the word Lunacy comes from the moon

BBC- How Offensive is the word Lunatic

Merriam Webster Dictionary- Lunatic

National Library of Medicine-- The Disease of the Moon

Griffith Observatory Moon Phases Picture

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