craze — an enthusiasm for a particular activity or object that appears suddenly and achieves widespread but short-lived popularity
Part of speech: NOUN
Definition: an enthusiasm for a particular activity or object that appears suddenly and achieves widespread but short-lived popularity
Pronunciation (IPA): /kreɪz/
Example Sentences
- The Pokemon Go craze had people walking into lamp posts while staring at their phones.
- My grandmother joined the yoga craze at age 80 and now she's more flexible than me.
- The current cryptocurrency craze reminds me of the dot-com bubble.
craze
NOUN[/kreɪz/]
an enthusiasm for a particular activity or object that appears suddenly and achieves widespread but short-lived popularity
A sudden craze for bubble tea has every teenager lining up around the block.
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🎤Pronunciation
🌳Etymology
Origin
The word craze derives from Old Norse crasa, meaning 'to shatter' or 'to break', which emerged in English around the 14th century. Through semantic evolution, it first acquired the sense of mental fracture or madness ('a broken mind'), then gradually shifted to denote an intense, widespread enthusiasm or fad.
Breakdown
crasa (Old Norse: to shatter, to break) → craze (to break mentally, to madden) → modern sense of an enthusiastic trend or fad. The morphological shift reflects the conceptual journey from physical breakage to psychological disruption to passionate obsession.
🎵Rhyme
🔗Collocations
📝Examples
“The Pokemon Go craze had people walking into lamp posts while staring at their phones.”
“My grandmother joined the yoga craze at age 80 and now she's more flexible than me.”
“The current cryptocurrency craze reminds me of the dot-com bubble.”
“Social media influencers often create new crazes overnight.”
📚Related Words
Synonyms
Antonyms
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