| 词汇 | gaga |
| 词源 | gaga. Someone cuckoo, off his rocker, mentally unbalanced. It has been suggested that gaga is of French origin, the word de- riving from the name of the French artist Paul Gauguin, who gave up banking to become a painter at the age of 35 and expe- rienced considerable mental anguish toward the end of his life. The word seems inappropriate, however, to express Gauguin’s tortured genius and would be a cruel and stupid coining if true. Alternatives are the theories that gaga derives from the French gateux, “an old man feeble-minded and no longer able to con- trol his body,” or that it is in imitation of an idiot’s laugh. The phrase has been artist’s slang, which would support the Gau- guin theory, but according to the gateux theory, gaga originated in the theatrical world about 1875, eight years before Gauguin (1848–1903) became a painter. |
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