FLUSTRATED!

Wild Word Friday!

Recently my friend, Lynn, and I were discussing a topic dear to both of us – words – and she brought up the word FLUSTRATED.  She mentioned that FLUSTRATED is a combination of flustered and frustrated and isn’t really a legitimate word, although people have begun to use it so frequently that FLUSTRATED is showing up in current dictionaries. 

I was intrigued and did a little sleuthing.  Lynn is right.   The word FLUSTRATED is not in my old college dictionary, but while I was perusing that hefty tome, I noticed that fluster has an interesting history.  Fluster probably first came into the English language from an ancient Norwegian word, flaustra, which means to bustle or hurry.  By the time English folks were speaking Middle English,  flaustra had become flosteren and meant “to excite with overuse of liquor”. 

Frustrated has Latin roots with an original meaning much like ours today – to be disappointed or deceived. 

Maybe when people say they are FLUSTRATED, they mean they are “deceived and in a hurry due to the overuse of liquor”. 

I don’t think we have a word for that in English.  Maybe we need to add FLUSTRATED to our language! 

What do you think?

Blessings!  Sue