Harold

n.

A person who hangs around in cemeteries.

—Harold v.

—Harolding pp.

Example Citation:

Eventually, "Harold and Maude" would play for two years in Paris, where Cort won a Crystal Star (the French equivalent of the Academy Award.) In college towns and art houses, the film found a devoted audience among disaffected youth. While the wild ones would watch "The Rocky Horror Picture Show" ad infinitum, the sensitive ones watched "Harold and Maude" again and again. One zealot claims to have seen it 201 times. "Harolding" became part of the teen lexicon: A term morose mopes coined to describe their penchant for cemetery-dwelling.

—Erika Milvy, "Bud Cort," Salon.com, September 4, 1999

Earliest Citation:

In Britain there is a subgroup of citizens called train-spotters who spend their afternoons sitting on railway embankments clocking the passage of local trains. In North America there is a similar subgroup, comprised almost entirely of teens, obsessed with hanging about cemeteries, continually witnessing the passage of life into death. They are called "Harolds" (etymology: the 1970s cult film classic Harold and Maude), and I was once very much one.

—Douglas Coupland, "Harolding," The New Republic, February 21, 1994

Notes:

This term comes from the movie Harold and Maude, in which a young man (Harold) is obsessed with death and so spends much of his time in graveyards.

Related Word:

death care industry

Categories:

Verbed Nouns

Aging and Death

People