English

Noun

earworm ‎(plural earworms)

1. A tune that is stuck in one's head, especially as unwanted or repetitive.
   • 2005, Kim Cooper, David Smay, editor, Lost in the Grooves: Scram's Capricious Guide to the Music You Missed, Routledge, ISBN 9780415969987, Klymaxx - Meeting in the Ladies Room, page 132:

     The chorus spawned an earworm so potent that women still mutter it as they exit for a bathroom break twenty years later.

   • 2005, Brain Stableford, Kiss the Goat, Wildside Press, ISBN 9780809544851, Chapter Two, pages 15-16:

     “Yeah, well,” he said, weakly. “Sometimes tunes do that.” […] ¶ “I don't mean that I heard it once before and caught an earworm.”

   • 2009, Steve Goodman, “1971: The Earworm”, in Sonic Warfare: Sound, Affect, and the Ecology of Fear, MIT Press, ISBN 9780262013475, page 147:

     A commonly cited species within memetics, the earworm is the catchy tune that you cannot get out of your head, the vocal refrain, the infectious rhythm or the addictive riff

Translations