🤒 Under the Weather: Feeling Blue and Other Meteorological Maladies 🌧️
Ah, what better way to talk about the human condition than through the seemingly universal attraction to liquid sunshine and gusty gales? One particularly pathetic phrase, particularly pattered around parlors at both formal and informal jamborees, is “under the weather.”
Meaning and Origin:
“Under the weather” is commonly used to express a feeling of being unwell or out of sorts. But did you know that earlier mentions of the term didn’t resonate with our modern-day meaning of feeling ill?
William Dunlap, in his memoir The Memoirs of a Water Drinker (1836), quips: “He seems a little under the weather, somehow; and yet he’s not sick.” Surprisingly, even Dunlap’s lexicon made room for some meteorological ambiguity!
Synonyms:
- Feeling blue
- Out of sorts
- Down in the dumps
- Not up to snuff
- In a funk
Antonyms:
- On top of the world
- In high spirits
- Feeling fine as wine (and twice as sparkling)
- On cloud nine
- Full of beans
Humor-Filled Quotes:
- Unknown: “I’m not ‘under the weather,’ I’m just not interested in meeting the sunshine halfway.”
- Oscar Wilde: “Conversation about the weather is the last refuge of the unimaginative. Unless one is merely feeling under it, then the topic becomes rather imaginative indeed.”
Related Proverbs and Expressions:
- “Feeling a bit off color”
- “Down with a bug”
- “In the doldrums”
- “Having the sniffles”
Literary References:
- “The Catcher in the Rye” by J.D. Salinger: “When you feel like being really sad, you almost get under the weather on purpose.”
- “On the Road” by Jack Kerouac: “We were driving through backward towns that smelled of boiled cabbage and under the weather hills.”
Songs and Lyrics:
- 🍂 “A Bad Day” by Daniel Powter: Spells out the feeling of being under various internal weather patterns.
- 🍃 “Stormy Weather” by Etta James: A melodramatic rendition of the tempest of emotion.
Movies:
- 🎬 “Inside Out”: Offers an animated take on what goes on when feeling various ‘weather’ moods.
- 🎬 “The Weather Man”: A weatherman’s life ironically spirals into chaos-ready atmospheres.
Related Games and Quizzes:
Your fascination with climatic cliché curves is nothing short of barometrical brilliance. And thus, for future outings and enjoyable literary ventures, may you always stay “above the weather!”
Keep your head in the clouds, and your feet on the ground.
- E. M. Cloudforest
