Why this word is great
LISZTOMANIA — [Noun] A feverish enthusiasm for the music of Franz Liszt. From Liszt (Hungarian composer Franz Liszt) + -o- (connecting vowel) + -mania ("excessive enthusiasm"), coined as German Lisztomanie by Heinrich Heine in 1844. Unlike "Beatlemania" (a mid-20th-century phenomenon of screaming teens) or "fandom" (a tamer, modern devotion), Lisztomania was a cultural seizure—part erotic frenzy, part religious ecstasy. It was gloves hurled onto stages like tributes, women fainting at the first hammered chord of "La Campanella," lockets filled with strands of the maestro’s hair passed between trembling hands. A time when music was not just heard but devoured, when the pianist was less a man than a force of nature—proof that art, at its most sublime, borders on possession.