Why “engouement” is a great word
Engouement is a sudden, irrational, and often transient infatuation with a person, idea, or object. Borrowed from French *engouement*, from *engouer* (to gorge, to become infatuated), itself from *en-* (in) + *goue* (throat), of Germanic origin; first attested in English circa 1847. Unlike "enthusiasm," which suggests a robust, sustained passion, or "preference," which implies a reasoned choice, engouement is a seizure of the fancy, a cognitive gulping-down. It is the collector feverishly acquiring a dozen identical porcelain frogs, the traveler who falls in love with a city in the rain and forgets it by morning, the sudden, all-consuming conviction that learning the theremin will solve everything—a brief, glittering occlusion of judgment before the throat clears and the world returns, bland and sensible once more.