• bonkers •
Pronunciation: bawng-kêrz • Hear it!
Part of Speech: Adjective
Meaning: 1. Crazy. nuts, balmy, daft, loony, bananas, meshuga. 2. (British navy slang) Tipsy, light-headed, mildly drunk.
Notes: Today's word is a rather funny synonym of crazy. It contains a very rare suffix, -ers, which prevents it from begetting, so it is a lexical orphan.
In Play: This word can mean "extremely crazy": "Homer went bonkers over Shiela's osso buco and asked her to marry him." It can also mean "mildly crazy" in a cute way: "You have to be bonkers to put up with drum rehearsals that long every day!"
Word History: Today's Good Word is a newcomer that can only be traced back to the 1930s. It contains a rare suffix -ers, found in only a few other adjectives, mostly British, like crackers, ravers, and preggers. It seems to be based on bonk, which is a variant of bong, the resounding sound from a large bell being struck. Bonk is the sound from a large piece of nonresounding metal being struck. We often bonk people on the head and the result is usually a little light-headedness. Bong and Bonk, or boink, are onomatopoetic. Sometimes funny words like today's are created around semantic associations like these rather than linguistic relations. (Now an e-bow to newcomer Derek Blayney for showing us the way to today's crazy Good Word.)
