wayback near the beginning (of the millennium also), I troubled upon the word tarassis in Mrs Byrne's Dictionary, which she glossed as male hysteria.

at the time, NicholasW opined, "There is no such word as tarassis. Mrs Byrne has got herself a mumpsimus, à mon avis."

but, he did point out the Gk tarasso, which per Liddell/Scott means to trouble the mind, confound, agitate, disturb, disquiet. this gets us in the ballpark at least, IMO.

the question remains, where did the word first manifest itself?
it keeps showing up in places such as Paul Dickson's Words and David Grambs' Endangered English Dict. - and in bunches of French texts.

-joe (seven years of hysteria later) friday