Trend Watch

Reince Priebus 'Apoplectic' at Trump's Refusal to Support Ryan

The word comes from a Greek verb meaning “to cripple by a stroke"

3 Aug 2016

Apoplectic rose, as bile rises in the gorge of a bilious patient, to the top of our lookups on August 3rd after reports that the chairman of the Republican National Committee was dissatisfied with Donald Trump’s latest political maneuverings.

Republican National Committee Chairman Reince Priebus is furious with Donald Trump's refusal to endorse House Speaker Paul Ryan or Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.), NBC News reported. Priebus is “apoplectic” over Trump’s remarks and called campaign chairman Paul Manafort and other top staffers to voice his “extreme displeasure,” NBC reported, citing a source in the GOP.
—Harper Neidig, TheHill.com, 3 Aug. 2016

Apoplectic, which comes from a Greek verb meaning “to cripple by a stroke,” initially had a medical meaning: “of, relating to, or causing apoplexy or stroke.” The word has been in use since at least 1562, when it appeared in Girolamo Ruscelli’s The Thyrde and Last Parte of the Secretes of the Reuerende Maister Alexis of Piemont: “This water is also verye good for men that be apoplectique yf they be wasshed with it.”

By the middle of the 19th century, apoplectic had begun to be associated with anger rather than actual apoplexy.

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