• paranoia •
Pronunciation: pæ-rê-noy-ê • Hear it!
Part of Speech: Noun, mass (no plural)
Meaning: Abnormal fear of persecution, irrational fear of threats to your well-being in the absence of such threats. Also a medical term referring to a psychotic disorder with the same symptoms.
Notes: Today's Good Word has two adjectives, paranoid and paranoiac, both of which double as a noun referring to a paranoid person. Paranoid is used far more widely and frequently, though I prefer paranoiac as a noun referring to a paranoid person.
In Play: Paranoia manifests itself primarily as an irrational fear of being watched by someone posing a threat: "Justin Case suffers from paranoia to the point that he walks backwards to make sure no one is following him." However, we should not lose sight of that adage of the 60s: "Just because you're paranoid doesn't mean they're not out to get you."
Word History: Today's Good Word is the Greek word paranoia "madness" simply transliterated to the Latin alphabet. The Greek word is the noun from paranoos "demented, out of one's mind" made up of para- "beyond" + noos "the mind". If I were paranoid, I would think the etymologists of the world are conspiring to keep the origin of noos away from us. A more likely explanation, though, is that no one knows where it comes from. The history of para is an open book. It comes from the same original root as English for and Latin per. It is used as a prefix in English today meaning "ancillary, parallel to", as the paralegal "a legal assistant" and paramilitary "ancillary to the military". (Let's now thank Helen Barrett lest she feel paranoid that we will not show our appreciation for her suggestion of today's Good Word.)
PARANOID?
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PARANOID?
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Re: PARANOID?
I'm not sure on to what extent they're out to "get us," but many web-sites now have so many tracking cookies that it's getting worrisome. The Wall Street Journal has been reporting on this in a series called "What They Know." If you weren't paranoid before reading these reports, you just might be afterward. Spooky."Just because you're paranoid doesn't mean they're not out to get you."
On a positive note, alphadictionary.com, our host, does not place tracking cookies. At least not yet....
Life is like playing chess with chessmen who each have thoughts and feelings and motives of their own.
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Yahoo has these things, or at least they used to. Called "web beacons," they were expressly intended to track, not usage of Yahoo's services, but users' travels throughout the web! To add insult to injury it started out as an opt-out service, rather than opt-in -- they did not offer users the opportunity to participate. They took users' permission to participate and left it to them to withdraw (if they knew about it) by actually going into their Yahoo profile and unchecking boxes that stated that the user had already "given" permission to install these bugs.
I rarely use Yahoo these days, so I have no clue whether they still use these things or not. But they probably do...
I rarely use Yahoo these days, so I have no clue whether they still use these things or not. But they probably do...
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