more on wrap rage

[Benjamin Zimmer]

On Sun, Nov 16, 2008 at 11:29 AM, Arnold Zwicky <zwicky at stanford.edu> wrote:
>
> > finally we get a claim taking it back to 2003:
> > ( http://www.squidoo.com/Package-Opener-and-Box-Opener-Stand-against-Wrap-Rage
> >  )
> >
> >   Apparently first used in print in a 2003 item in London's Daily
> > Telegraph, the term "wrap rage" is rapidly catching on as a name for
> > that peculiar combination of irrational frustration and homicidal
> > anger brought on by hard-to-remove product packaging.
[snip]

That's also the first cite given by Wordspy:

---
http://www.wordspy.com/words/wraprage.asp
Cornhill Direct has identified "wrap rage" as the latest irritant in
modern life to drive Britain's more unstable citizens crazy.
Spokesman Allan Truman says every year more than 60,000 people need
hospital treatment for injuries caused by grappling with food
packaging. "About 2,000 accidents happen while people are trying to
separate items of frozen food, usually with a knife."
—James Moore, "Slice of life in the kitchen," The Daily Telegraph
(London, England), November 7, 2003
---

In this OUPblog column I listed some more "rages" gleaned from the
Oxford English Corpus:

http://blog.oup.com/2007/08/inner_blog/


--Ben Zimmer

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