Definitions

from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 5th Edition.

  • noun A loud, discordant noise.
  • noun A hangover.
  • noun A state of depression or bewilderment.

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License.

  • noun hangover
  • noun jitters; discord; confusion
  • noun depression

from WordNet 3.0 Copyright 2006 by Princeton University. All rights reserved.

  • noun loud confused noise from many sources
  • noun disagreeable aftereffects from the use of drugs (especially alcohol)

Etymologies

from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 4th Edition

[German, hangover : Katzen, pl. of Katze, cat (from Middle High German katze, from Old High German kazza; akin to Old English catt; see cat) + Jammer, wailing (from Middle High German jāmer, from Old High German jāmar, misery).]

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License

German Katzenjammer ("the wailing of cats"), hangover; a compound formed from Katzen (plural of Katze), cat + jammer, wailing or distress.

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Examples

  • (Alas! as I was to learn at a later period, intellectual intoxication too. has its katzenjammer.) « Table of contents

    Chapter 21 2010

  • From below deck, a katzenjammer of libidinous voices is heard.

    La insistencia de Jürgen Fauth 2010

  • Afar from honks of motor cars, and all the city's clamor, I'd like to sleep beneath the stars, and feel no katzenjammer when in the vernal dawn I wake, as chipper as the foxes, to eat my frugal oatmeal cake put up in paper boxes.

    Rippling Rhymes Walt Mason

  • If in doing so he were to be perceived as another wealthy and indolent foreigner (usually German or French but not always so) suffering and despondent because of a katzenjammer from a previous night of quaffing Laos Beer, so be it.

    An Apostate: Nawin of Thais

  • You've got an awful katzenjammer from the Stokes 'dinner, and all you men ought to be horsewhipped for letting yourselves in for such a party.

    The Heart of Rachael Kathleen Thompson Norris 1923

  • The cynic who housed in a tub and clothed himself with a second-hand carpet is as rich to-day as he that reveled in the spoil of Persia's conquered king and kicked the bucket while enjoying a case of katzenjammer.

    The Complete Works of Brann the Iconoclast, Volume 12 1919

  • In an orchestra of eighty men there is inevitably at least one man with a sore thumb, or bad kidneys, or a brutal wife, or _katzenjammer_ -- and one is enough.

    Damn! A Book of Calumny 1918

  • (Alas! as I was to learn at a later period, intellectual intoxication too. has its katzenjammer.)

    Chapter XXI 1913

  • An orgy in cans and bottles, a bacchanalian revel: a cupboard full of indigestion, joy, forgetfulness and katzenjammer.

    Where there's a Will 1912

  • Should he find a man suffering with katzenjammer he would pronounce him a "suspect."

    The Complete Works of Brann the Iconoclast, Volume 10 1905

Comments

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  • The first thing this word reminds me of is "The Katzenjammer Kids", one of the comic strips I tried to follow in the 1940s when I was first looking at newspapers -- it didn't set the best example for reading, or for anything else I was learning then. Its ongoing continuation can be easily found on the web, along with accounts of the comic strip's complicated history. Its 100th anniversary was Dec. 12, 1997.

    November 1, 2012

  • dfgheherhre

    November 1, 2012