A while ago a friend of mine sent me an SMS saying they’d finally found the cause of my problems:
“Aeroneurophycosis: in which the sufferer developes a sexual atraction to aircraft”
Yup – that sure summed it up. I used the word a few times with friends (who all agreed entirely that it certainly seemed an accurate diagnosis) and even let Steve Tupper over at Airspeed Online know it could be used as a “high brow” version of the phrase “Aviation Wood” he occasionally refers to.
Shame it’s not a real psychiatric term.
It was on Wikipedia for a while but then was deleted and now just shows up in their list of deleted articles with freaky titles.
Of course, that doesn’t mean we can’t use it :)
Searches are starting to find it appearing in Twitter feeds (not all of them mine or ones I have any say in :) and on blogs here and there. So, if you find the word amusing and believe it could describe the strange attraction you (or someone you know) may have for aircraft, why not start using it. Let’s see if we can’t give the word some support out here on the ‘net.
After all, it really does sound like a great, succicnt description of what so many fans of aviation are like around aircraft.
Just wondering about the spelling of “aeroneurophycosis”… looking at the Wiki deletion log, it looks like it was originally “aeroneuropsychosis”. Difficult to be sure, what with the actual meaning being purged from all of the legitimate dictionaries (why?), and speling aint my strong point. Any thoughts on this discrepancy? (I haven’t heard of a “phycosis”, but “psychoses” are everywhere.)
There may be a case for its re-instatement if it can be demonstrated that the word was in error only because of a misspelling.
Interesting – I’ve only ever heard it referred to as aeroneurophycosis. I did a Google on aeroneuropsychosis and nothing comes up except lots of hits for neuropsychosis in general.
A Google of “phycosis” does return a number of results (if you tell it you really want phycosis, not psychosis :) :) It seems to be related to depression, etc.
Hmmmm :)
I doubt it’ll ever get reinstated without a significant amount of medical literature that can be used as a reference to support it. So, in the meantime, aeroneurophycosis FTW :) :) :)
Documentation, eh? I’m sure we can create this! I’ll leave the T-shirt as it is then.
Cool! I am *so* going to have to go & buy a few of your men’s shirts (I’ve been looking for some new cool stuff to get as most of mine have been around for a few years :) http://www.cafepress.com.au/fighterjox/7744384
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