The other day my computer informed me that there are important updates to be downloaded and installed. So, I began the process, but it did not go very smoothly. The system crashed a few times, notified me that a connection did not work right, and seemed to take forever. I was starting to “pull my hair out.” The phrase “to pull hair out” is an idiom used to indicate extreme frustration and being very worried or upset about the situation one is immersed in. I’m sure most of you have experienced this sensation from time to time.
Did you know that there is an actual medical condition that reflects this idiom? Trichotillomania is the abnormal desire to pull out one’s hair. According to the American Journal of Insanity, the July edition of 1894, trichotillomania was proposed by Dr. François Henry Hallopeau for the condition. It is a disease, consisting of aggravations of itching sensations in the hairy parts of the body, accompanied by a madness, that leads the people to try to get relief by pulling out the hairs. By 1896 the word was defined in medical dictionaries, such as George M. Gould’s The Student’s Medical Dictionary as “an uncontrollable impulse to pull out one’s hair.”
Trichotillomania comes from the Greek word for hair – trich – and the Greek verb tillein, to pull or pluck, plus the suffix ‘mania’ from the Greek mainesthai, meaning to be mad.
Temi Adebowale wrote in Harper’s BAZAAR in July 2018 that model Sara Pinto Sampaio, Victoria's Secret Angel, discussed a mental health issue that affects her everyday life, trichotillomania. In her situation it manifested itself in an uncontrollable condition that gave her the urge to frequently pluck the hair from her eyebrows. She was praised by fans and the media for raising awareness of the little-known condition.
The idiomatic form of this medical condition has been in usage for centuries. The Book of Nehemiah in the Old Testament of the Bible records, “In those days I saw the Jews who had married women of Ashdod, Ammon, and Moab. And half of their children spoke the language of Ashdod, and they could not speak the language of Judah, but only the language of each people. And I confronted them and cursed them and beat some of them and pulled out their hair.” (Nehemiah 13:25) The prophet was so frustrated with the people that he performed the idiomatic version of trichotillomania on them.
The Hebrew word marat means to make bare and was used to indicate violently plucking out the hair on the scalp or beard. It also indicated a medical issue that made one bald, as can happen with the disease of leprosy. The prophet Ezra, who lived around the same time as Nehemiah, did it to himself in frustration over the mixed marriages of Jews and people from other lands and faiths. (Ezra 9:3)
Isaiah, the prophet, when penning about the Servant of the Lord, the Messiah, wrote, “I gave my back to those who strike, and my cheeks to those who pull out the beard.” Interestingly, the Gospels of the New Testament record that Jesus’s back was beaten during his trials before the Roman authorities but do not document any “hair pulling” by Jewish guards or Roman soldiers.
I hope you never have to deal with trichotillomania in your life, but I’ll bet you will have instances of the idiomatic form of the disease. We often experience times of exasperation when trying to deal with difficult situations such as the following examples.
People who spend time searching the internet for timely information have been known to express, “We’ve been pulling our hair out trying to figure out what is causing the server outages.”
Many mothers and fathers have declared, “The kids have been out of control all morning long. They’ve got me pulling my hair out!”
Concerned parents have pronounced, “When they still weren’t home by midnight, I was pulling my hair out.”
Amid a desperate search many women have stated, “I dropped my earring somewhere in the house and I have been pulling my hair out trying to find it.”
Keep a positive attitude about life’s irritations, because pulling your hair out will only make you bald.
Columnist John Kreutzwieser loves to research words and writes this weekly Word Wisdom column for Moose Jaw Express/MooseJawToday.com. He has an interest in the usage, origin, and relevance of words for society today. Greek and Latin form the basis of many words, with ancient Hebrew shedding light on word usage.
John would like to know if anyone has a sincere interest in a relevant word that he could possibly research for an upcoming column. If so, please send your requests to wordwisdom2021@gmail.com . Words will be selected according to relevance and research criteria. We cannot confirm that all words will be used.
The views and opinions expressed in this article are those of the author, and do not necessarily reflect the position of this publication.
