Here’s an important thing to know, if you are interested in language and gender: the word “hysterical” (along with “hysteria”) comes from a Greek root meaning “uterus,” as in the word “hysterectomy”.   I was in college when this was pointed out to me.  I learned then that for millennia, women were diagnosed as “hysterical” under the belief that one’s uterus could travel around the body and cause trouble with other organs, as evidenced by symptoms as varied as coughs, depression, nervousness, and general troublemaking.*  Recommended “treatments” varied from marriage and pregnancy to genital stimulation to complete bed rest.

A quick search produces many discussions of the Wandering Womb fallacy,** including this long and brilliant essay by author and teacher Terri Kapsalis, who pulls together Charlotte Perkins Gilman’s “The Yellow Wallpaper,”*** ancient diagnoses and current politics, and so much history, and even a women’s march (last year’s) at the end.

I have slowly been removing “hysterical,” with its historical image of women out of control (or deemed out of control by others), from my repertoire of words that mean “funny,” a task that became much simpler once I realised “hilarious” filled exactly the same connotative slot for me.****

However, I found these signs from last Saturday to be, indeed, and appropriately, hysterical:

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*It’s possible that my remembered image of a uterus supposedly traveling far enough to throttle one’s brain was satire, or exaggeration on my part, or possibly even just a misplaced Douglas Adams quote.  …But maybe not.

**Or, if you prefer, “phallacy”.

***With the vital takeaway that anyone who reads or assigns “The Yellow Wallpaper” is contextually obligated to read or assign the 1913 essay entitled “Why I Wrote ‘The Yellow Wallpaper’”.

****Thanks to Adam Rex for this marketing comic, which kind of settled the word “hilarious” in my active repertoire, and for the eponymous book, The True Meaning of Smekday, an adventure both hilarious and thought-provoking, and one of my favorite middle-grade books.