nostomania

Pronounced: nos-tuh-MAY-nee-uh (alt: nos-tuh-MAIN-yuh), noun

Notes: Another new word to me, but not what it is

---

Yesterday’s word

The word tromometer is “an instrument for detecting or measuring faint tremors caused by an earthquake”

First usage

Our word came into English in the late 1800s

Background / Comments

The first thing I thought when I saw the definition was I thought that’s what a seismograph does. However, a seismograph is actually something that records (thus the “graph” part of it) seismic waves; such a device is called a “seismometer”. Incidentally, seismic waves are vibrations caused by a sudden release of energy in the Earth’s crust (not just earthquakes, but explosions can cause seismic waves) that travel within the Earth (also called “body waves”) or along the Earth’s surface (also called “surface waves”). So much for that, but what’s the difference between a seismometer and a tromometer? I’m not sure; there wasn’t much about tromometers, and Wikipedia entry for seismometer did not mention a tromometer. Thus, going by the definition, a tromometer seems dedicated to detecting faint tremors. Our word comes the Greek word tromos (trembling) – but so does the sieismometer, which comes from the Greek word seismós (a shaking or a quake).