Verklempt

Verklempt (pronounced fur-klempt, ver-klempt, vuh-klempt, or fuh-klempt)

Someone rendered unable to speak because they're emotionally overwhelmed.

1990–95: From the Yiddish פֿאַרקלעמט‎ (verklempt, farklemt or farklempt (overcome with emotion)), the past participle of verklemen or farklemen (also spelled as verklemmen & farklemmen) (to clamp (in a vise), to pinch, to choke (in the sense of “choke up”)) from the German verklemmt (inhibited, hemmed in, feeling (figuratively) squeezed; uptight (literally, “pinched, squeezed”), the past participle of verklemmen (to become stuck).  Ultimately, the Germanic forms can be traced back to the Old English clam & clom (bond; fetter).

Verklempt is a Yiddish loan word and spellings like ferklempt, fahklempt & farklempt are sometimes seen because it’s only in recent decades it’s has become fashionable and many are familiar with it only through oral use and the variations reflect interpretations of the phonetic perception.  The way English works is that if any of the variations beginning with “f” become prevalent, eventually they’ll be acknowledged as alternative spellings and perhaps even an English word.  For its effect (replete with cultural history), verklempt will remain Yiddish and thus a foreign borrowing and purists will note the advice of the Yiddish Word Dictionary that verklempt is pronounced “fur-klempt”.  The construction followed the usual German spelling and grammatical traditions, the ver- suggesting something happening to the subject (on the model of vergessen (forgotten)).  There are dozens of words related to the behavioural consequences of human emotion but the closest synonyms to verklempt are phrases like “overcome with emotion”, “overwhelmed”, struck dumb”, “rendered speechless” or “choked up”; words like “flustered” or “nervous” aren’t quite right because they refer to cause rather than effect, verklempt being an effect.  The root was from klemmen (which enjoys a range of meanings from “to press, to squeeze” to “to block, to oppress”.  Verklempt is an adjective (the noun use (the noun plural being verklempts) is informal).

Lindsay Lohan and her lawyer in court, Los Angeles, 2011.

To be verklempt is to be overwhelmed by emotion to the extent one is rendered unable to speak.  In modern use it’s associated with tell-tale phrases such as “choking back tears”, “quivering lips”, “moist eyes” et al but in Jewish tradition the Yiddish farklempt was associated not with any overwhelming emotional response but specifically to depression, loss and grief.  Encouraged by a variety of push & pull influences (notably talk-shows and click-bait), public displays of emotion are now more common than once and, in some circles, probably obligatory.  A state of verklemptness is one of the elements and in video feeds can function well as the “dramatic pause” which, as that phrase implies, should not too long linger or the audience will become impatient.  The comparative is “more verklempt” and the superlative “most verklempt” and subjects can, with the appropriate visual clues, operate anywhere in that spectrum but a frozen silence is essential and, cognizant of the audience’s attention span, it shouldn’t be maintained for more than about 7-10 seconds which doesn’t sound long but on a content-intensive medium like a video feed it’s quite a pause.

A verklempt Lindsay Lohan: Cady Heron and the bus scene (Mean Girls (2004)).

Verklempt is specific to being rendered physically unable to speak because of being emotionally overwhelmed although that’s just one possible reaction and one can be so emotionally overwhelmed one feels compelled to speak; it’s all about the circumstances of the moment.  In a sense verklempt is opposite of that described by the English Romantic poet William Wordsworth (1770–1850) who in the preface to the 1800 edition of his Lyrical Ballads wrote “Poetry is the spontaneous overflow of powerful feelings: it takes its origin from emotion recollected in tranquillity”.  The poet clearly was fond of the phrase because he’d used it before and it’s endured because probably no other fragment of thought so well captures the moment of the Romantic poets which shifted a whole generation from the Augustan neo-classical style which was eighteenth-century poetry towards something intensely emotional and accessible.

Romantic poetry was so appealing to so many because the words summoned the ecstasy of the soul rather than of technique, the latter something understood only by a tiny educated elite.  The public adored the romantic movement because it was so accessible but the among the elitists there was distaste for what they viewed as little more than a tawdry emotional manipulation of the masses and later TS Eliot (1888–1965) (a self-declared “classical poet” in the special sense TE Hulme (1883–1917) used the term) would maintain that after John Donne (circa 1571-1631), a “dissociation of sensibility” afflicted poets, making them unable to  think as keenly as if they were sensing something or experiencing a deep emotion. Thought and feeling, Eliot argued, were as one in John Donne; in later poets, they became “dissociated”.

Not verklempt, something else; Mitch McConnell freezes.  Twice.  July-August 2023. 

Nor is verklempt a suitable word to describe the manifestations of the conditions now on show in the upper reaches of US politics (senile decay, cognitive decline, old age etc) although the symptoms often overlap to the point of being indistinguishable.  Senate minority leader Mitch McConnell (b 1942) attracted much recent interest when on two occasions in July & August 2023 he “froze in place”, mid-press conference, standing silent for some 20 seconds, apparently unable to respond until led away by aides.  The senator later informed the press he was “fine” and merely had felt “light-headed”, later releasing a letter from the attending physician of Congress that said that he was “medically clear” to continue his schedule.  Given the senate minority leader doesn’t operate heavy machinery and (at least directly) is probably a danger only to himself if he continues in office, presumably the medical bulletin is correct but the apparent state of his health (and others in the congress) has triggered some debate about whether term limits or retirement ages should be introduced.  Although technically it’s not possible with absolute certainty to define the point at which statutory senility is attained, the increasingly geriatric state of the US body politic suggests it shouldn’t be too hard to make an educated guess about which are afflicted.

To be verklempt might have better.  Joe Biden in Vietnam (not India as he appears to believe), September 2023.

In the White House however, there may be a feeling among his handlers that a verklempt Joe Biden (b 1942; US president since 2021) might be something easier to spin that the one they’ve got who just keeps talking, often descending into mumbling incoherence before shuffling off the stage, sometimes tripping over obstacles, real and imagined.  There is a (doubtlessly apocryphal) story told in Washington DC that President Biden was told it was time to meet the cabinet.  After a few minutes it was noticed he was missing but was then discovered in another room talking to a bookcase and arguing with a chair.  The real concern was he lost the argument.