Ever Wonder Where Doomscrolling Came From?
Hello,
This week’s word is a modern one with old roots – doomscrolling. You may be immune to this online habit, if so here’s the definition – “the tendency to continue to surf or scroll through bad news, even though that news is saddening, disheartening, or depressing.” (Merriam Webster)
While the term is particularly associated with the compulsion to read all the Covid news while stuck at home, it was in use around social media from about 2015. Perhaps in earlier times our ancestors doom-read with printed newspapers as it certainly appears to be a natural inclination for humans.
As you might guess, doomscrolling is compounded from doom and scroll, both of which are words with old roots.
Doom entered Old English as dom (a law, judgement, etc.) from the ProtoGermanic root word domaz. The same root provides similar words to Old Saxon, Frisian, and Norse. A book of laws in Old English was a dombec. By Middle English, doom had acquired extra letters and was spelled doome.
The association of doom with fate or destruction began in the early 1300s and was widespread by the 1600s. Doom was, by then, associated with the term doomsday – the day of judgement in Christian faiths and the end of the world as we know it. The link between laws and judgement is pretty clear.
You may recall the Doomsday Book – commissioned by William the Conqueror, it was completed in 1086, is held in the UK National Archives and can be accessed online so if you really want to doomscroll you could try that as a source. In this case it’s not filled with bad news, or laws as it’s a listing of land and assets throughout England. Its contents were as undeniable as laws, hence the name, and it was useful to the king so he knew what he owned and what he was owed in taxes.
Scrolling to show part of the information on a computer/phone screen has been in use since the 1980s but originally that verb meant to write information down in a scroll, so just how old is scrolling?
Scroll the noun entered English around 1400 spelled as scroule or scrowell (a roll of parchment or paper) with links to the word rolle (roll) as the paper was rolled up for safe storage and transport. It arrived via Anglo-French from Old French escroe (roll of parchment), which came from Frankish, and ultimately from a ProtoGermanic root word.
The Dead Sea Scrolls (dating to the third century B.C.) are probably the most famous old scrolls but as parchment doesn’t always survive the centuries it’s hard to be sure of how far back in time scrolls go. Old roots indeed for doomscrolling.
Until next time, happy reading, writing, and wordfooling,
Grace (@Wordfoolery)
