… created by an unintentionally creative headline writer in the News and Observer:
WHY SPORTS SCANDALS ARE SO MEZMORIZING
The writer means MESMERIZING (the term is derived from Franz Anton Mesmer), and his double mistake – Z instead of S; O instead of E – creates a thing of beauty, a word that combines the idea of being riveted, entranced by something with the idea of not being able to forget it (memorize). That form of remembrance which is so strong as to be mesmerizing we can now call mezmorizing.
No doubt the poor writer will correct the headline once ridicule and abuse set in; but UD loves the word, and hopes the newspaper retains it.
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Poo. They fixed it.
June 13th, 2015 at 8:29PM
Uh, a definite maybe, maybe. A memory with an extraordinary, hypnotic valence? How do you distinguish from other powerful “memories”, such as those elicited or coached by prosecutors or defense attorneys? Wouldn’t “obsessive” as a modifier for “memory” do better than a shaky, untested neologism? Viz., Ockham’s Razor, all that.