electronics abbreviation of alternating current/direct current, by 1898. As slang for "bisexual," 1959, said to have been in use orally from c. 1940; the notion is of working both ways.
British oral code for letter -a- in wireless and telephone communication, 1898; hence ack-ack "anti-aircraft" (gun, fire, etc.). Compare toc (-t-), emma (-m-).
1898, from French anomique (Durkheim, 1897); see anomie.
A more important form of suicide is that which the author terms "anomic," by which he means the suicides produced by any sudden social shock or disturbance such as that due to economic disasters. Men commit egoistic suicide because they see no further reason for living, altruistic suicide because the reason for living seems to them to lie outside life itself, anomic suicide because they are suffering from a disturbance of their activity. [review of "Le Suicide" in Mind, April 1898]
"opposed to imperialism," 1898, American English, in debates about the Spanish-American War, from anti- + imperialist. It was the title of a weekly anti-war publication begun in 1899. Related: Anti-imperialism.
also autoerotic, 1898, coined by Havelock Ellis from auto- + erotic. Related: Auto-eroticism (1898). The opposite is allo-erotic.
By "auto-erotism" I mean the phenomena of spontaneous sexual emotion generated in the absence of an external stimulus proceeding, directly or indirectly, from another person. [Ellis, "Auto-Erotism," in The Alienist and Neurologist, April 1898]
"pertaining to automobiles," 1898, a hybrid from auto- "self," from Greek, and motive (adj.), from Latin. Used earlier as a noun (1865) in reference to some sort of helicopter-like device.
