flashback
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GC: n

S: DrugWise – https://www.drugwise.org.uk/flashbacks/ (last access: 25 April 2020); Medscape – https://emedicine.medscape.com/article/288154-overview (last access: 25 April 2020).

N: 1. 1903 in reference to fires in engines or furnaces, from verbal phrase (1902), from flash (v.) + back (adv.). Movie plot device sense is from 1916. The hallucinogenic drug sense is attested in psychological literature from 1970, which means probably hippies were using it a few years before.

2. An involuntary recurrence of some aspect of a hallucinatory experience or perceptual distortion occurring some time after ingestion of the hallucinogen that produced the original effect and without subsequent ingestion of the substance.

3. In posttraumatic stress disorder (q.v.), the sensations resulting from strong emotional sequences acting as triggers.

4. Psychology (General); Mental Disorders; Phraseology: flashback.

  • Recurrent and abnormally vivid recollection of a traumatic experience, as a battle, sometimes accompanied by hallucinations.
  • posttraumatic stress disorder … Essential symptoms: Flashbacks of a traumatic event … Have you ever experienced flashbacks, when you found yourself reliving some terrible experience over and over again?
  • Phraseology: a flashback to s.o.’s past (e.g. childhood, adolescence); flashback episodes, flashback sequences; disorganizing flashback; to experience a flashback, to suffer from flashbacks.

5. Audiovisual Techniques and Equipment; Cinematography; Television Arts: flashback, flash-back.

  • An insert scene in a dramatic presentation showing an action or event supposed to have taken place in the past.

6. Literature, Art, Film and Theatre: analepsis (literary flashback).

  • A literary technique that involves interruption of the chronological sequence of events by interjection of events or scenes of earlier occurrence.
  • A description of an event or scene from an earlier time that interrupts a chronological narrative.

7. There are two meanings listed in OED’s entry for the noun analepsy, one of which is labelled obsolete.
analepsy has developed meanings and uses in subjects including pathology (Middle English) and medicine (1830s).

  • The earliest known use of the noun analepsy is in the Middle English period (1150—1500).
    OED’s earliest evidence for analepsy is from before 1398, in a translation by John Trevisa, translator.
  • analepsy is of multiple origins. Partly a borrowing from French. Partly a borrowing from Latin.
    Etymons: French analepsie; Latin analepsia.

S: 1. Etymonline – https://www.etymonline.com/search?q=flashback (last access: 25 April 2020). 2 & 3. MedDict – https://medical-dictionary.thefreedictionary.com/flashback (last access: 25 April 2020). 4 & 5. TERMIUM PLUS – https://www.btb.termiumplus.gc.ca/tpv2alpha/alpha-eng.html?lang=eng&i=1&srchtxt=flashback&index=alt&codom2nd_wet=1#resultrecs (last access: 8 January 2025). 6. MW – https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/analepsis (last access: 26 April 2020). 7. OED – https://www.oed.com/dictionary/analepsy_n?tl=true (last access: 8 January 2025).

OV: flash-back

S: Etymonline – https://www.etymonline.com/search?q=flashback (last access: 25 April 2020); TERMIUM PLUS – https://www.btb.termiumplus.gc.ca/tpv2alpha/alpha-eng.html?lang=eng&i=1&srchtxt=flashback&index=alt&codom2nd_wet=1#resultrecs (last access: 8 January 2025).

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CR: analeptic, nikethamide, recurrence.