Katzenjammer (noun)

You have to love a word that sounds like it has multiple, absurd meanings but alas is quite simple when you learn it. You would think this would be the name for either a type of boat or some absurd-sounding and functioning contraption or invention, purely designed to cause imminent disaster, but no.

However, it’s no surprise that this word has negative meanings. So without further to do..

As defined by Merriam-Webster:

Katzenjammer! Yarr!

kat·zen·jam·mer

1: hangover

2: distress

3: a discordant clamor

Use in a Sentence:

1.) Katzenjammers dominated JoJo from dusk to dawn. If it wasn’t traffic, it was waiting in line for coffee. If it wasn’t trying to make it to work on time, it was trying to turn on her computer, only to freak out when the screen kept asking her to press “any” key. Even masturbation was a katzenjammer in itself with the new dildo she had purchased from some heavily-pierced dude at the local adult shop on Henry and Paulson. She tried to turn it on, not realizing the setting was already set to “ramming speed,” and the dildo flew out of her hands, into the air, ricocheting off the walls and somehow landing on the kitchen counter on the other side of the apartment, where her sweet old mother was making a cake. Mistaking the dildo for a cake mixer, her mother said, “Thank you, honey, I was just about to ask you where the mixer was.”

2.) Reginald pushed his throbbing head hard into the pillow. He had many katzenjammers before, but this one was particularly bad considering he had made the poor decision of mixing Jose Cuervo tequila with Goldschlager liqueur. Not only had he blacked out, puked in the fish tank, pooped in the refrigerator and ate the whole wheel of cheese, he had somehow put on one of the red strapless dresses that his roommate, Clarissa, had in her closet and passed out in it. Now with his stomach churning, his head throbbing and his ass feeling it was on fire, this katzenjammer took the cake.

“I DON’T KNOW WHAT WE’RE YELLING ABOUT?!”

3.) As Betty lay down to sleep after a long arduous day of accounting, she was awoken suddenly by a loud katzenjammer from the neighbors next door, who were incessantly playing industrial music full blast, which sounded like a barrage of metal pipes being clanged together.

Synonyms:
babel, blare, bluster, bowwow, brawl, bruit [archaic], cacophony, chatter, clamor, clangor, decibel(s), din, discordance, noise, racket, rattle, roar