Spring fever: Malaise or motivation

Spring fever.

Does the phrase conjure the thought of barely clad coeds romping in Cancun?

Or do you think more along the lines of taking a “sick day,” just to be outside?

Spring fever is one of those conflicting phrases that can mean both listlessness and animation.

Sometimes, there are sexual overtones. Even the Urban Dictionary defines spring fever as “excessive horniness eclipsed by post nasal drip.”

But where did this spring fever phrase spring from?

Everett Community College English instructor Richard Davis had to go back as far as 1767.

There, he found one reference: a disease found most common in the U.S. Army.

“They thought it was a real disease,” Davis said.

Davis then turned to his colleague, David Rash, EvCC’s public services librarian, for elucidation.

Rash found two different — and somewhat contradictory — definitions of spring fever.

Using the authoritative “American Heritage Guide to Contemporary Usage and Style,” Rash said the original meaning dates back to the 1840s and referred to languor or listlessness.

Remember, at the time, our agrarian ancestors were probably not all that excited to return to the back-breaking work in the fields.

Then in 1945, pop culture spun the definition a bit.

The lyrics from Rodgers and Hammerstein’s Academy Award-winning song, “It Might as Well be Spring,” recast spring fever as a person feeling “restless as a willow in a windstorm,” and “as jumpy as a puppet on a string.”

Perhaps this spring fever isn’t a feeling after all but a real physiological phenom, suggested writer Elena Conis in a Los Angeles Times story “Why the spring makes us feverish.”

Conis talks about how, in the spring, our bodies produce higher levels of serotonin, a mood-elevating chemical that sparks giddiness, energy and enthusiasm.

We want to burn our Gore-Tex and get out the short pants.

Davis cites the article and how it connects spring to all sorts of phenomena, from exceptionally high rates of unplanned pregnancies — inexplicably, men have unusually high sperm counts in spring — to rosacea.

There also are things scientists admit just don’t jibe, such as a rise in suicide rates in spring and, ironically, humans having less sex in spring.

So contradictions crop up like crocuses when it comes to spring fever. But Davis explains it.

“Most people today when they talk about spring fever refer to the malaise, to why people are dozing off or not doing what they are suppose to be doing because they have spring fever,” Davis said. “Or perhaps they are energizing in an area where they hadn’t been in awhile, like at the tennis court as opposed to at their desk studying furiously.”

Theresa Goffredo: 425-339-3424; goffredo@heraldnet.com.