Last night, someone uttered the phrase "the howling fantods," which I thought was an absolutely fabulous phrase. The thing was, I assumed that fantod was some nonsense word. But when I got home, I looked fantod up, and amazingly enough, fantod is legit.
Unfortunately, all the various dictionaries I'm looking in are giving me slightly different answers about what it means. One source tells me it means "State of worry or excitement; fidget; fuss;" Another source says it's simply "nervous anxiety." Another source still says it's "A crotchety way of acting; a fad." and "a., Fidgetty, restless."
Gah, this uncertainty over what the word means gives me the howling fantods!
“the howling fantods” is an expressioned coined by david foster wallace in his novel “infinite jest”. it’s used a number of times by the narrator and it basically means “the creeps”. dfw is a compulsive reader of the oed and you damn well need a dictionary to get through the book. the book remains, however, at over 1000 pages of fucking brilliant writing, literally and figuratively one of the monuments of late twentieth century literature . . . the original heartbreaking work of staggering genius.
Twain used fantods minus the howling part in The Adventures of Huck Finn.
word.
the expression “urban fantods” is used by thomas pynchon in his novel “gravity’s rainbow.” Wonder if that’s where DFW first came across the word?