case of thumbitis
- noun
- /keɪs əv ˈθʌmˌaɪtɪs/
- Slang
- Doctors are seeing more patients with a case of thumbitis due to increased smartphone use.
Examples
-
I think I have a case of thumbitis from all the texting.
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Sarah visited the doctor when her case of thumbitis became too painful to ignore.
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After a weekend marathon of video games, he ended up with a case of thumbitis.
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After a long day on my phone, I developed a case of thumbitis.
-
Doctors are seeing more patients with a case of thumbitis due to increased smartphone use.
-
After a long day on my phone, I developed a case of thumbitis.
-
Sarah visited the doctor when her case of thumbitis became too painful to ignore.
Synonyms
Pain and swelling in a tendon, often after using it too much
Pain and swelling in a tendon that makes movement hard
Painful swelling of a tendon and its covering that makes movement hard
Painful swelling of a tendon and the thin covering around it
Swelling and pain in a tendon and the thin covering around it
Antonyms
How Painful
Surface Forms
Morphology
case + of + thumbitis
The frame 'case of' clearly marks an instance of a condition, and the coined item 'thumbitis' transparently contains 'thumb', signaling the body part involved. However, '-itis' is a medical/derivational suffix that many B1 learners may not recognize, and the specific pragmatic sense (pain from excessive texting/device use) is not explicitly encoded, so the meaning is only partially predictable.
Etymology
Case of thumbitis is a joking, medical-style name made from case, thumb, and the ending -itis that makes a word sound like a sickness. It creates the image of sore thumbs after too much texting or gaming, so it means 'pain in the thumbs from using phones or game controllers'.