the.com/rebound
The relationship equivalent of eating ice cream straight from the tub after a breakup.
means To bounce back emotionally (or romantically) right after a loss, often by diving into a new relationship before you've actually healed.
from From re- 'back' plus bound, the springy jumping verb traced to French bondir, which once meant 'to resound' or 'echo' before it mellowed into 'to leap.' The physical sense — a ball bouncing back off a surface — came first; the heart-related sense, where a person 'rebounds' off one relationship into another, is a much later, 20th-century emotional borrowing of the basketball-court physics.
- basketball term
- Literally means a ball bouncing off the rim.
- first heartbreak use
- Appeared in English by the 1830s.
- psychology angle
- Often about ego repair, not real attraction.
- survival rate
- Few rebound relationships outlast the breakup they followed.