The Epizootic
By DAN LANGFORD
My late aunt used to describe a general malaise — not quite sick, but not exactly well — as the “epizootic.” This she pronounced just as it looks — “ep-uh-ZOO-dic” — rather than the more correct “ep-uh-zuh-WAT-ic.” The word really means a disease that affects many different animals of the same species at the time, a sort of critter epidemic, but Auntie used it to describe what we today would call the “blahs.” When she thought one of us had the epizootic, she’d recommend we be shot in the tail with hot fat, presumable to perk us up. I’ve heard this saying in other families as well, and am curious as to how widespread its usage may have once been. Now, everyone seems content to get the blahs from time to time, but they seemed a lot more interesting when they were called the epizootic, and Auntie was threatening a shot in the tail with hot grease.