Sunday 28 March 2010

Word Search

There ought to be a word for the feeling you have when there was something you wanted to buy on Ebay and you forgot when the auction was going to end and then, too late, you noticed that it had ended and the thing you wanted went for an absurdly low price and you didn't remember to bid - and you know that there will probably never be another thing like it auctioned on Ebay again (and, even if there is, it will cost four times as much as the one you've just missed.) There ought to be a word for that, but I can't think of it right now. There is disappointment in it, of course, but also irritation - at yourself for being such an idiot. A desire to be pleased for the anonymous bidder, who is probably thrilled to bits with their new purchase, is in the mix, but there is only a trace of it, and that is largely overwhelmed by a sense of injustice that, for once, someone got a bargain and it wasn't you.

5 comments:

  1. oooh I have that feeling frequently. Perhaps the mistake should be called a 'twatastrophy'

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  2. I suspect a German portmanteu word is required here.

    Something like: Narrselbsthassebilligeverlustenttäuschung (literally, fool self-hate bargain-loss disappointment)

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  3. Excellent, Brit, although it would soon be shortened to geverlust, and spelling the full name would become a favourite question for nerds in pub trivia contests.

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  4. Twatastrophy lays the blame to squarely at my feet, I think, Worm - which is where it belongs, but I don't want to acknowledge that.
    Anything with Enttauschung (and v impressed you got the umlaut in there - skills way beyond me) gets my vote, I like that word, although for a long time I thought it had something to do with diving but that was without the 's' it turned out.
    Do people still say, 'Don't get in a bate' or 'Don't get batey' meaning, 'Don't get cross, don't get worked up?' I was thinking of 'ebatey'. 'I got really ebatey when I missed out on that auction'? 'I'm in an ebate.'

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