the.com/overreaction
The emotional equivalent of using a flamethrower to light a candle.
means A response that is way out of proportion to whatever actually triggered it.
from Straightforward English-parts coinage: the prefix 'over' (too much, excessive) plus 'reaction,' itself from Latin 're-' (back/again) and 'agere' (to do, to drive), the same root that gives us 'act' and 'agent.' 'Reaction' entered English through 18th-century science, describing a physical or chemical response to a force; 'overreaction' is the later, more exasperated offspring, applying that clinical idea of a system responding to a stimulus to the far messier, less measurable business of human feelings — where the response, unlike in chemistry, often has no sane ratio to the cause.
- origin
- amygdala hijacks logic before logic can object
- social media
- turns minor inconveniences into main character tragedies
- tell
- response outweighs the actual stakes by miles
- irony
- usually creates the bigger problem it feared