In the past few weeks, people lined up at Popeyes, a popular restaurant chain known for its Southern-fried chicken, all over the US to get their hands on a hot and hyped new menu item: a chicken sandwich.Â
On Dictionary.com, meanwhile, we saw our own crowd: searches for pandemonium surged nearly 350% since mid-August, when Popeyes released the sandwich en masse.
Searches for pandemonium are đ on . We imagine you're imagining something like this.
— Dictionary.com (@Dictionarycom)
Is the trend a coincidence? Itâs hard to know for sure, but a number of media stories described the craze for the Popeyes chicken sandwichâas viral online as it was offâas pandemonium. Popeyes pandemonium or poultry pandemonium made for punchy alliteration, of course. On the Daily Show with Trevor Noah, for instance, Roy Wood Jr. recapped the event in a September 3 segment it called âPopeyes Chicken Sandwich Pandemonium.â
So, since everyone else talked about it this week, now it’s our turn to take a bite into this juicy word, pandemonium.
șÚÁÏÍű does pandemonium mean?
Pandemonium refers to a situation or scene or âwild uproar,â âunrestrained uproar,â or âutter chaosââwhen everything is out of control
The word is often used more literally, as in “There was complete pandemonium in the theater after someone shouted ‘Fire!'”
We also like to use pandemonium for exaggeration: “It was pandemonium at the mall on Black Friday as shoppers scrambled to get the best deals.”Ìę
Itâs this more hyperbolic use of pandemonium at work in the mediaâs description of the craze over Popeyesâ chicken sandwich. Fast food feuds! Social media battles! Long lines of hungry customers! Kitchens running out of chicken! Tweetstorms! Think pieces! Absolute pandemonium!
Well, a Popeyes store in Texas was held up at gunpoint after it sold out of the sandwiches. And demand pushed many Popeyes workers to a breaking point. Maybe pandemonium isnât so melodramatic after all …
Where does pandemonium come from?
Like fried chicken, the word pandemonium also comes out of the deep fryerâof Hell, that is.
John Milton concocted the word pandemonium in his 1667 Paradise Lost, an epic poem about the biblical fall of Adam and Eve. The work is considered one of the most important works in English literature. Beyond his writing, Milton is sung for his contributions to the English language, with words like pandemonium.Pandemonium literally means âabode of all the demons,â with pan– from the Greek word for âall.â In Paradise Lost, Pandaemonium, as Milton so modeled the term after Latin, was âthe high Capital / Of Satan and his Peersâ in Hell.Â
After being banished to Hell, Satan and his fellow fallen angels quickly build a city and palace at Pandemonium. There, they assemble in a council to discuss how to get back at God. After much speechifying, they resolve to corrupt Godâs new, beloved creation: humans, Adam and Eve.
And this is how we got the Popeyes chicken sandwich. No, no. We jest.
This is how we get the word pandemonium. After 1667, pandemonium (now usually lowercase and spelled without that Latin ae) evolved from âthe abode of all demons, hellâ to âa center of evil and wickedness,â then to âa place of great confusion and disorderâ and âchaosâ more generallyâand as we saw with Popeyes, figuratively.
Popeyes has since sold out of chicken sandwiches. For now. But donât you worry. Weâre not going to sell out of words any time soon. Now that would be pandemonium.
