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Münch·hau·sen

Karl Friedrich Hi·e·ro·ny·mus  /kɑrl ˈfri drɪx ˌhi eɪˈroʊ nüˌmʊs/ Show Spelled[kahrl free-drikh hee-ey-roh-ny-moo s] \

720–97, German soldier, adventurer, and teller of tales.

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English, Mun·chau·sen

Munchausen

in allusion to unbelievable stories (1850) is in reference to Baron Karl Friedrich Hieronymus von Münchhausen (1720-1797), Ger. adventurer who served in the Russian army against the Turks; wildly exaggerated exploits attributed to him are told in the 1785 English book “Baron Munchausen, Narrative of his Marvellous Travels,” written by Rudolph Erich Raspe (1734-1794).

Sounds harmless enough, right? This is a perfect example of a word added to our language. It’s also a great example of a word that brings an immediate visceral reaction—pretty good for a guy who’s been dead for more than 250 years.

In case you’re not a fan of television medical dramas or any of the Law and Orders (HUGE fan here), you may not have heard of Munchausen Syndrome or the even creepier, Munchausen By Proxy Syndrome.

Here’s what the medical sites have to say: Patients who present with overt symptoms who subsequently prove to have factitious disease are particularly challenging to physicians. Munchausen syndrome is distinguished from other factitious diseases by the lack of secondary gain. The patient’s reason for engaging in deception is not to escape some consequence in life. Instead, the patient suffers from an apparent deep-seated need to be sick; a need which can impel the sufferer to injure or poison themselves in an effort to sustain the illusion of organic illness. 

Richard Asher coined the eponym in 1951. Asher named the syndrome after Karl Friedrich Hieronymus, Baron Munchausen (1720-1797), a man who traveled widely and was renowned in his time for telling fantastic and exaggerated stories about his life.¹

Which means, in a nutshell, people who suffer from these syndromes take hypochondria several scary steps further.

Give it a try. Share your sentence with us. Make sure it contains 2 words with the letters M and E and the word Munchausen.

Grammar Punk Sentence:

M E 2

Listening to Aunt Celia’s litany of imaginary ailments, Gerald couldn’t help but wonder if there wasn’t a Munchausen or two in the family tree.