I may be suffering from ennui.
I find myself increasingly underwhelmed by a world that seems determined to overwhelm me.
Perhaps I have simply lived long enough to have seen too many things announced as
unprecedented, historic, transformative and game-changing
. . . to become terribly excited when the next one arrives. Which may explain why I suddenly noticed a word.
WHELMED.
There are people who are underwhelmed. There are people who are overwhelmed. But whatever happened to the people who were simply whelmed?
It turns out that whelm is not a word somebody recently invented by removing the over from overwhelm. It is the older word.
Whelm has been in English since the Middle Ages, meaning to engulf, submerge, overturn or overcome. A ship could be whelmed by the sea. Then came overwhelm, which eventually carried away most of the business. Much later came underwhelm.
And something peculiar happened. Modern ears looked at the resulting language and heard a scale:
[Whelm is of uncertain origin, though a connection with helm has been suggested. The etymologists remain nonplussed. Justin has taken the helm anyway.]
UNDER — WHELMED — OVER
Too little.
Just right.
Too much.
Never mind that this isn’t what whelmed originally meant. English had rediscovered the Golden Mean.
The joke is older than it looks.
At Delphi they said:
NOTHING IN EXCESS.
Aristotle found virtue somewhere between deficiency and excess.
Grandmothers from the Griko part of southern Italy reduced several centuries of philosophy to something like:
ALL THINGS IN MODERATION.
Goldilocks required three bowls of porridge to reach much the same conclusion.
And now ordinary speakers, apparently dissatisfied with having only emotional extremes available to them, have begun putting whelmed back to work.
Perhaps there is something particularly useful about the word now.
Everything is supposed to be
awesome, amazing, incredible, epic, devastating, terrifying or life-changing!
Apparently merely having a satisfactory afternoon is no longer sufficient.
Perhaps we have become overwhelmed by the obligation to be overwhelmed.
Which brings me back to my ennui. Maybe it’s just a case of weltschmerz. Or perhaps, after all these years, I have finally achieved something closer to equanimity.
Ennui says: Nothing moves me anymore.
Equanimity says: Things still move me, but they don’t knock me over.
I prefer whelmed.
More WORDS IN THE WILD can be found: HERE
COUNCIL-OF CONCERNED-CONSERVATIONISTS…..Between Jest And Earnest….. 
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