According to Tom Wolfe, it was originally a Hells Angels' term for a bad motorcycle trip, but it eventually became a Hippy term for a bad LSD trip; what word is it?
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The critically-acclaimed board game
MooT
consists of tough questions about the nuances of the English language.
Answer:
bummer
According to Wolfe in The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test:
"The Angels were adding LSD to the already elaborate list of highs and lows they liked: beer, wine, marijuana, Benzedrine, Seconal, Amytal, Nembutal, Tuinal. Some of them had terrible bummers — bummer was the Angels' term for a bad trip on a motorcycle and it very quickly became the hip world's term for a bad trip on LSD."
The Oxford English Dictionary defines the term as: "An unpleasant or depressing experience, esp. one induced by a hallucinatory drug." Note: The OED's first citation for the term is from 1967 (Joan Didion in the Saturday Evening Post): "I ask if he found a ride to New York. ‘I hear New York's a bummer,’ he says."
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Also Common Noun "Bummer" one who "bums" cigarettes (always smoking others' supplies). Slang in India late sixties
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