Definitions
Wiktionary
- n. Plural form of fantod. To have “the fantods” is to be in a state of nervousness, distress, or anxiety.
WordNet 3.0
- n. an ill-defined state of irritability and distress
Etymologies
- The first known record of the word is from 1839, in the book Adventures of Harry Franco by Charles Biggs. (Wiktionary)
Examples
“I think the blue fantods is probably exactly what Altman would have suffered if he'd lived to see Avatar.”
“It must have been a case of the dreaded leaping fantods.”
“I think Avatar would have given Altman the shrieking blue fantods, if you'll excuse the expression.”
“ I will of course have to wash my hair and bathe afterwards, and then spend a few weeks recuperating so that I don't get the fantods.”
“Just watching the window washers swinging on their seemingly rickety rope rigs gives me the fantods.”
“Savage Arms, which gave the shooting industry the leaping fantods when it introduced the Accu-Trigger, has just announced the Accu-Stock, which is just as radical.”
“In fact, to settle my inflight fantods, I have already consumed three screwdrivers.”
“If you use perfume thereafter, go easy on the saucy splash behind the ears, because you can bet that some grump or hyper-sensitive soul will complain bitterly about headache, nausea or a general outbreak of the fantods.”
“The idea of facing a discerning Eastern audience gave Sam the fantods, but he said yes, and Frank Fuller joined Charles Henry Webb on the Mark Twain multimedia express, as his lecture manager.”
“This last use gives Sega and the US intellectual property infrastructure massive fantods, so they've cooked up a little protection racket, talking US Customs into seizing and returning any cables on their way into the US on the grounds that they violate the DMCA.”
Lists
These user-created lists contain the word ‘fantods’.
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Open List: SUGGESTIONS FOR THE UNDERS...
Recruiting all Wordieniks to introduce me to their best word friends!! If words were people, this is the list for ones I should meet and ones I will (hopefully) like.
gyre, penultimate, cake, schadenfreude, lacuna, skedaddle, schopfling, morphoanatomy, overscore, swasivious, brightling, phrontisserie and 17 more...
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May 2010 (Wedding Month!!)
Just the words I meet this month, starting with cecum.
cecum, compersion, antilogy, fantods, dord, flam, ipsedixitism, quartine, glycation, neoteny, desiccation, hypovolemia and 17 more...
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theyearofglad's list
Awesome words.
palimpsest, portmanteau, prolix, sycophant, eschew, revenant, haecceity, velleity, equipoise, caesura, soteriology, inchoate and 23 more...
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Pluralia Tantum
Nouns that are common in plural form but are non-existent or rarely used in singular form.
scissors, thanks, clothes, remains, tights, trousers, pants, news, billiards, means, mathematics, physics and 221 more...
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xyzprincess's Words
crabwise, virtu, peripatetic, idyll, trencherman, equivocate, flummery, hoi polloi, pixilated, albatross, wangle, bodacious and 170 more...
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Just 'cause I like 'em, F
felony, frolic, fend, fuselage, farthingale, freewheeling, frigorific, flummery, fancypants, felsitic, flagstone, flageolet and 295 more...
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•Open List: I Wonder What Reesetee's ...
macaw, mudhen, squop, flammulated, obsidian, squarehead, parsnip, sprocket, bloviate, fantods
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sionnach's Words
contumely, fomite, holmgang, poltroon, eleemosynary, obsidian, nugatory, grindcore, felch, recrudescent, pyx, parenteral and 3271 more...
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Words I Like
Random vocabulary words that I am particularly fond of.
absquatulate, anthropophagy, bibliobibuli, boeotian, boondoggle, borborygmic, brobdingnagian, brummagem, bugaboo, callipygian, cataglottism, chiaroscuro and 92 more...
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akmed13's Words
time, spaceship, quantum mechanics, time traveller, bezonkers, strakh, path integrals, gorbfest, amphigory, amber, bicycle, amphisbaena and 358 more...
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grassdog's Words
schadenfreude, sanguine, nefarious, verisimilitude, antediluvian, salacious, obfuscate, plethora, cacophony, defenestration, vacillate, blasphemy and 478 more...
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EN - funny (single) words
"Fornication" is not equal to "formication".
Words with funny meaning, spelling or both.barratry, bastinado, bezonian, bibcock, bibliobibuli, biffy, bodewash, boeotian, boondoggle, borborygmic, bosky, brobdingnagian and 729 more...
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Word of Infinite Jest
quincunx, plosivity, prolix, aleatory, diagnate, appetitive, experialist, candidiatic, chapeau, perfidiously, antitheory, décolletage and 150 more...
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jmjarmstrong's list
Words that I used to know.
geloscopy, hunker, willy nilly, harum scarum, whacko, meh, nork, misunderestimate, atrabiliousness, luftmensch, auxanometer, hyperhedonia and 1948 more...
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Schizowallflower's Words
defenestrate, pneumonoultramicr..., antidisestablishm..., fustian, rusticate, chicanery, brummagem, panoply, incontrovertible, junta, pleonasm, spurious and 15 more...
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Where's My Cheap Slangshot?
Absolute depravity.
blue ruin, oofay, never~was, claptrap, the clanks, hokum, letch, mulligrubs, shiever, wheep, fantods, bilge and 54 more...
Tweets
Looking for tweets for fantods.
milosrdenstvi Didn't David Foster Wallace use it enough times to last us the next couple of decades? Feb 2, 2013
chained_bear Congratulations to fantods for making it onto the 2013 Wayne State Word Warriors list of words that should be used more often. Seen here. Jan 31, 2013
chelster "These was all nice pictures, I reckon, but I didn't somehow seem to take to them, because if ever I was down a little, they always give me the fan-tods." -- Mark Twain, The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, 1884. The earliest citation in the Dictionary of American Regional English is from 1876. Jun 8, 2010
michaelphilipsmith Shouldn't DFW be added into the examples? May 20, 2010
jmjarmstrong JM is beside himself, in flaming fantods, screeching histrionics in the direst of foreboding and doom – he watched the Evening News! Feb 19, 2009
missanthropist A mythical disease causing melancholy, nervousness, depression; The Willies. Jul 16, 2008
trivet hee, hee! Sep 23, 2007
billifer Main Entry: fan·tod
Variant(s): also fan·tad
Function: noun
Inflected Form(s): -s
Etymology: perhaps alteration of fantigue
1 usually fantods plural a : a state of irritability, fidget, and tension; sometimes : a state of acute worry and distress b : a state of bodily or mental disorder especially when ill-defined and more or less chronic
2 sometimes fantods plural a : an instance or occurrence of the fantods b : a violent or irrational outburst
3 : a fidgety fussy officer of a ship
Citation:
"fantod." Webster's Third New International Dictionary, Unabridged. Merriam-Webster, 2002. http://unabridged.merriam-webster.com (6 Jan. 2007). Jan 6, 2007
billifer Some of the words people post on here give me the howling fantods. Jan 5, 2007