A rather uninspired choice as Oxford University Press word of the year? Maybe not
In one piece of writing, Maeve Binchy suggested brain rot was a major concern in Dalkey at the time. Photograph: Ian Cook/Getty Images
“While England endeavours to cure the potato rot,” he wrote in 1854, “will not any endeavour to cure the brain rot?” Ever since, periodically, outbreaks of the latter disease have been reported on both sides of the Atlantic. Further back in the archives, I find that the condition was also a big worry to Irish nationalists, before, during and after the War of Independence.against criticisms from one Ed Murphy. So doing, he generously excused the latter of cerebral decay, but only by suggesting there might be other, worse conditions at work: “Mr Murphy’s muddled ideas are not necessarily due to ‘brain rot,’ whatever one may think of his glaring misstatements and his vituperation,” De Ceabhasa wrote.
In the 1912 song, the bards assembled to defend themselves against another threat – imported foreign music – which it was their turn to consider corrupting, eg: “Cakewalk and ragtime and tit-bits of French/Claptrap and bunkum, brain rot and stench./Deserted at last are the groves of Parnassus,/And music has fled ‘fore the braying of asses.”
The campaign had featured a march through Mohill on New Year’s Day 1934, where protesters chanted “Down with jazz”.
Frank-Mcnally Maeve-Binchy Eamon-De-Valera Carrick-On-Shannon
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