dropsies
dropsies Lexical Profile
dropsies Game Scores & Validity
• noun
North American A temporary, often humorous tendency or habit of dropping things, especially a ball in sports (usually preceded by 'the').
"The wide receiver had a bad case of the dropsies during the second half of the game."
The plural form of dropsy; an old-fashioned or historical medical term for edema, the abnormal accumulation of fluid in body tissues or cavities.
"Eighteenth-century medical treatises often classified various dropsies according to the specific part of the body affected by swelling."
Word Nuance & Usage
In sports and everyday slang, 'the dropsies' is used humorously as a plural-form singular noun to describe a sudden streak of clumsiness, whereas the plural of the archaic medical term 'dropsy' (edema) is rarely encountered.
Word Origin & Etymology
The medical sense derives from Middle English 'dropesie', a shortening of Old French 'idropisie', from Greek 'hydrōps' (related to 'hydōr', meaning water). The informal sense of dropping objects arose in 20th-century American English as a humorous pun on 'drop' and the disease name.