Cocooning? a trend word on the test bench
In short a few words on our own behalf: All proponents of our beautiful German language is assured that I am not concerned to make a new Anglicism acceptable. Rather, I would like to try to give a new trend word a bit more depth of focus.
Me is the word? Cocooning? When studying a women's magazine in the waiting room of a doctor first crossed the path. Like every word unknown to me, I wrote it down in my notebook, to do it later at home in peace. It's like the insect researcher who discovers a new beetle species: something like that wants to be classified and classified. Until German linguists find a nice new word that has exactly the same meaning as? Cocooning? we have to come to terms with Anglicism or avoid it. So, now on the subject.
Actual meaning & origin
The search engine translator (did you notice how cleverly the Anglicism Google Translator was avoided here?) Translated? Cocooning? from English with pupate or einspinnen. In the animal kingdom, this term refers to the total immobilization of an insect larva in a cocoon (pupa) as a last developmental step towards the fully mature adult insect. So far, so good, but not really satisfying. The women's magazine at the doctor had praised Cocooning as the new trend in cosiness, not as tutoring in biology. But at least the simple translation of? Cocooning? the rough direction in which to search for a deeper meaning of the term.
Transferred meaning
The cocoon of a pupated insect is to be understood as an analogy to a person's own four walls. But while the insect larva is condemned to complete inactivity, man may move freely in his home during cocooning and do cozy things. It is therefore a conscious decision to more domesticity. In this context, the term cocooning was first used in the late 1980s by American trend researcher Faith Popcorn. Why the hype about this term starts with us only about forty years later is a mystery to me. One thing remains to be noted: All medial attempts to sell this trend as NEW are like the futile effort to jump on a train that has been roaring for a long time.
A safe haven
Sociologists have discovered that the trend towards cocooning is paralleling the growing complexity of the world. Means: The less orientation man finds in our fast-moving time, the more often he retreats into his private environment. This tendency can also be seen in times of crisis, for example after terrorist attacks or natural disasters. Retailers know how to cleverly use this deeply human behavioral pattern and constantly present new products designed to bring even more cosiness to their home.
This retreat into domestic security is not only to be understood as an escape, but at the same time as a countermovement to the insatiable thirst for adventure of the last decades. This fits the (of course also) English abbreviation JOMO, which for? The Joy of Missing Out? (The pleasure of missing) is. All this has in the broadest sense with the equally heavy trend to "more mindfulness"? to do. After the wave of "that-must-have-experienced"? So now comes the movement of the? that-must-have-felt ?. What would we do without the clever sociologists? We do not even know what's bothering us right now?
The close relatives of cocooning
A term that slowly emerges from the orbit of cocooning is (as it should be otherwise) also an anglicism: homing. He is a good 20 years younger than cocooning and is already being traded as a follow-up trend. Basically, both terms describe one and the same phenomenon. Brand new, but according to Duden also Germanized, comes the Danish? Hygge? therefore. For a change so a scandal, how nice. Denmark is a bit closer to the Arctic Circle than Germany, which could explain the trend of making it hyggelig at home. Lots of candles, preferably a log fire, hot tea and self-made socks. Then bake with your favorite cookies and in the evening invite a few friends for punch and rummy. Winter, you can come.
And now?
Personally, I've been living in the trend of cocooning, homing and self-doing for a long time, but I've always referred to that as a homely coziness. And that's exactly what I'm going to do in the future. It would also be kind of strange to call a friend and ask, "And do you feel like coming by tonight? We can cocoon fully homing and make us hyggelig until we drop. ?? Sometimes it is also very trendy to be Oldschool, right?
