Pronounced: ih-PEN-thuh-sus (alt: ih-PENT-thus-sus), noun
Notes: A technical term that many of us have experience with
Yesterday’s word
The word Ophelian means “displaying madness, suicidal tendencies, and similar characteristics”
First usage
Our word came into English in the first decade of the 1900s
Background / Comments
You probably recognized (as I did) “Ophelia”, a character in William Shakespeare Hamlet. However, I wasn’t quite sure of the meaning, because my recollection of Ophelia’s story wasn’t terribly accurate. In the story, she was driven to insanity and killed herself.
Richard's Vocabulary Word-of-the-Day 