There was a short piece on the Radio 4 Today programme this morning about earworms (with some annoying examples! - listen here for another week). Earworms are annoying snippets of songs that you can't get out of your head. The psychologist on the programme said that her department at Goldsmiths, University of London, was researching into the reasons they were so catchy (repeated hearing played a part, as did what state of mind you were in, and whether any of the words in the song caused particular memory associations; in addition, earworms often included long notes with intervals that are close together. The psychologist also said that it is believed that certain personality types are more susceptible to them than others).
The word 'earworm' is a direct translation of the German Ohrwurm. This definition of earworm is in the OED as its third definition. Earworm was in the earliest edition of the OED as another word for earwig. The first citation is dated 1598. The second definition of earworm (marked obsolete and rare) is "a counsellor who advises a monarch etc in secret".
Here is the website of the Earworm Project at Goldsmiths. You can report your own earworm experiences here.
I never heard about Earworm..After reading this blog I came to know that Earworms are annoying snippets of songs that you can't get out of your head. Well I don't know much about it but it seems to be a nice thing..
Posted by: German translator | October 23, 2012 at 10:33 AM
Susan"
"Earworm" is one of those words; it annoys me every time I read it. Call me a peevologist, but until another word for the annoying tic comes along, I prefer descriptive explanations, i.e.,"Such and such a song keeps running through my head. It's driving me crazy!"
Posted by: Marc Leavitt | October 23, 2012 at 03:45 PM
You might also like The Definitive Guide To Earworms (http://earwurm.com/song-in-my-head/) which has a list of synonyms and related words, such as haunting melody, involuntary musical imagery , musical hook, tune wedgie, sticky tune, demon tune etc.
Posted by: Licia | October 25, 2012 at 09:31 PM
This is an example of a " calque", isn't it? A word has been borrowed from another language, but translated directly into English, rather than us using " Ohrwurm" as a loan word?
Posted by: Jenny Lewin-Jones | October 27, 2012 at 08:11 PM
Thanks for the comments. Licia - that's a very annoying site! Jenny - yes, thanks for the information.
Posted by: Virtual Linguist | October 28, 2012 at 05:46 PM