Tuesday 28 July 2015

single word requests - What's a good adjective or phrase to describe your feeling when confronted with absurdity?

If you are feeling the anger and the hilarity simultaneously, you actually are feeling



ambivalent




ADJECTIVE



Having mixed feelings or contradictory ideas about
something or someone:




The strength of your anger, and the strength of your amusement are both at play in your mind:




"simultaneous conflicting feelings," 1924 (1912 as ambivalency),



from German Ambivalenz, coined 1910 by Swiss psychologist Eugen
Bleuler (1857-1939) on model of German Equivalenz "equivalence," etc.,



from Latin ambi- "both" (see ambi-) + valentia "strength,"



from present participle of valere "be strong" (see valiant).



A psychological term that by 1929 had taken on a broader literary and
general sense.




Usually the ambivalence is between the strength of love and hate (anger), rather than anger and hilarity.



The etymology of absurdity intersects at incongruity and dissonance of your emotional experience:




late 15c., from Middle French absurdité,



from Late Latin absurditatem (nominative absurditas) "dissonance,
incongruity," noun of state



from Latin absurdus "out of tune;"



figuratively "incongruous, silly, senseless,"



from ab-, intensive prefix, + surdus "dull, deaf, mute" (see
susurration).




You're so mad you shouldn't be laughing, but you are!

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