I love words that roll off the
tongue and actually sound like what they describe. Collywobble is
one of them and means a pain in the abdomen and especially in the
stomach; a bellyache. "I awoke this morning with collywobbles, and
had to take a small dose of laudanum with the usual consequences of
dry throat, intoxicated legs, partial madness and total
imbecility..." Robert Louis Stevenson.
Etymologist believe that collywobbles most likely has its origin in
cholera morbus, the Latin term for the disease cholera (the symptoms
include severe gastrointestinal disturbance). How cholera shifted
into collywobbles was probably influenced by the words colic and
wobble. John Chapman is currently suffering from the
collywobbles.
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