screaming meemies
1
9.9
- noun
- /ˈskrimɪŋ ˈmiːmiz/
- Archaic
:
nerviosismo extremo
- She has the screaming meemies before every exam.
Examples
-
Any mention of spiders is enough to bring on the screaming meemies for her.
-
She got the screaming meemies right before her big presentation.
-
The horror movie gave him the screaming meemies for days afterward.
-
Don't get the screaming meemies over this presentation!
-
When he heard the loud noises outside, he was struck by the screaming meemies and couldn't calm down.
-
The thought of speaking in public gave her the screaming meemies before she even stepped on stage.
-
As the roller coaster climbed to the top, the riders felt the screaming meemies take hold of them.
Synonyms
9
9.9
A strong nervous or scared feeling that makes you feel uneasy
1
5.5
A strong nervous feeling that often comes before an important event
Antonyms
How Nervous
- Archaic
1
9.9
272
2.3
423
3.5
36
2.7
19
4.4
9
2.7
Surface Forms
Morphology
screaming + meemies
Although 'screaming' conveys intensity, 'meemies' is not a transparent lexical item (it’s slang/nonsense) and provides no predictable semantic contribution. The overall meaning (a state of extreme nervousness/panic) is idiomatic and cannot be derived from the constituents, so a B1 learner who only knows the parts would not reliably infer the MWE meaning.
Etymology
Screaming meemies may come from a playful old phrase that puts screaming, meaning loud shouting, next to meemies, a silly name for tiny, scary creatures, making a picture of someone frightened and noisy. So it came to mean 'a sudden fit of extreme nervousness or panic'.