what's a screaming meemie?

Factual Questions
1

What is a screaming meemie???

2

It’s kinda like a heebie jeebie, only louder.

3

The heebie-jeebies go back to 1923, and actually may have been termed such by a cartoonist, Billy De Beck. This according to JE LighterAmerican Slang. He says *a feeling of anxiety or apprehension; jitters.

screaming meemies according to my Webster is quoted from 1942, meaning nervous hysteria; jitters. Lighter quotes the meemies from 1946. Since Lighter hasn’t yet published vol III, I can only assume that the 1942 cite is in the OED. How about it, JeffB?

4

In addition to its general meaning as “the willies”, the name screaming meemie was also given to a variety of whistling artillery round used by the Germans in WWII. That can be cited to Bill Mauldin’s Up Front, 1944.

5

THANK YOU ALL.
I figured there was more to it than just plain noise.

6

I was wondering why the phrase seemed so familiar to me - I read that section of Up Front less than a day ago. It’s an interesting book.

7

To be more precise, the term refers to the sound made by nebelwerfer rockets when launched.

8

I just got back from the library, and have this hypothesis…

The OED lists Moaning Minnie from a 1941 cite. It was obviously referring to an air-raid siren. I think the cite was British in origin.

There is then a 1942 cite about screaming meemies–If the mother gets the screaming meemies every time the siren growls….

A 1944 cite, Infantry Journal says

.

So how hard of a jump is it to assume that the original term was Moaning Minnie, which then morphed to another female name? In the first case we have alliteration-moaning minnie and in the second, we have a reduplicative rhyme, screamy mimi. Both techniques are the heart and soul of slang.

The only thing that bothers me is the 1927 cite in the OED New Republic, the following is a partial list of words denoting drunkeness now in common use in the US…to have the screaming meemies… I haven’t reconciled this early cite yet. Help!

9

a more recent connotation, at least the one i grew up with, is “a bottle rocket that launches with a whistling noise” (seems safe to assume these were named because of their superficial similarity to the whistling german mortars).