Hebephrenic: a condition of adolescent silliness. Remember his inappropriate grin?
Hebephrenics in action:
A child farts in the classroom while the class listens to an exquisite excerpt from Beethoven's 9th symphony. The resultant reaction from the rest of his classmates is hebephrenic, if hebephrenic can be used as an adjective.
Hmmmm, pipe bomber is curiously appropriate here.
Well, smack my face and call me Sally. Look at this definition:
1. hebephrenic adj Suffering from a form of schizophrenia characterized by foolish mannerisms and senseless laughter along with delusions and regressive behavior; Synonyms: schizophrenic http://ultralingua.net/dictionary/index.php3?letters=hebephrenicThat definitely wipes out my application to the elementary music classroom above!
Dear WW: No indeed. Hebephrenia does not have to be pathological, though it often is.
Does the name "Alfred E Neuman" ring any bells?
Stems from Greek, hebe = youth. Hebe was also cup-bearer to the gods - was she noted for her youth? Not a medical question, just wondering. Forgive me!
dxb.
Dear wofahulicodoc: Alfred E. Newman of Mad Magazine looks to me more like room temperature IQ than hebeprhrenic, which ususally has a distinctive inappropriateness in the facial expression.
Dear dxb: I suspect that Hebe was the role model, so that her name was applied to the type. I thought Zeus preferred male cup bearers. Divine deviation. Yuk.
Dear wwh,
Not sure of all his proclivities, but Zeus was married to Hera and seems to have enjoyed Leda and also Nemesis, by one or other of which he became father to Helen of Troy, supposedly hatched from an egg (swan egg?). Maybe he simply felt a godlike disdain for minor physiological differences.
dxb