Nabokov has some interesting observations about the word hyp (which I assume this "hipped" is related to) in his commentary to Pushkin's Eugene Onegin, Ch. 1, stanza xxxviii, where Pushkin diagnoses Onegin's boredom: "A malady . . . similar to the English spleen, / in short, the Russian khandra / was getting hold of him little by little." Nabokov has this to say: "Handrá {N.'s transliteration}, 'chondria,' and spleen, 'hyp,' illustrate a neat division of linguistic labor on the part of two nations, both famed for ennui, the English choosing 'hypo' and the Russian 'chondria.' There is, of course, nothing especially or time-significant about hypochondria (in the initial large sense; and excluding the American connotation of maladie imaginaire). The spleen in England and ennui in France came into fashion about the middle of the seventeenth century, and throughout the next hundred years French innkeepers and Swiss mountain folk kept begging hypish Englishmen not to commit suicide on their premises or in their precipices—a drastic measure to which the endemic and more benign ennui did not lead."
Nabokov has some interesting observations about the word hyp (which I assume this "hipped" is related to) in his commentary to Pushkin's Eugene Onegin, Ch. 1, stanza xxxviii, where Pushkin diagnoses Onegin's boredom: "A malady . . . similar to the English spleen, / in short, the Russian khandra / was getting hold of him little by little." Nabokov has this to say:
"Handrá {N.'s transliteration}, 'chondria,' and spleen, 'hyp,' illustrate a neat division of linguistic labor on the part of two nations, both famed for ennui, the English choosing 'hypo' and the Russian 'chondria.' There is, of course, nothing especially or time-significant about hypochondria (in the initial large sense; and excluding the American connotation of maladie imaginaire). The spleen in England and ennui in France came into fashion about the middle of the seventeenth century, and throughout the next hundred years French innkeepers and Swiss mountain folk kept begging hypish Englishmen not to commit suicide on their premises or in their precipices—a drastic measure to which the endemic and more benign ennui did not lead."
"Morbidly depressed; low-spirited." --A Sea of Words