Why "Knismolagnia?"

[Lucidus]

Knismesis and gargalesis are two separate kinds of tickling, and produce completely different responses (most of the time). Knismesis, light tickling, doesn't even always produce laughter. It would seem that, for most of us, our paraphilia is focused on gargalesis, or "hard tickling," which (when it works) always produces laughter. Right? Isn't laughter a huge part of this for most of us? So why is our paraphilia's technical name, "knismolagnia," derived from knismesis and not gargalesis? Shouldn't it be "gargalelagnia?" Or, at the very least, shouldn't "knismolagnia" and "gargalelagnia" be separate paraphilias?

It just doesn't make sense to me to lump gargalesis in with knismolagnia!

 

[Tenebrae]

I don't have a definite answer, but I strongly suspect that it may be along the lines of Chrichton and Spielberg having deinonychuses called velociraptors: because the name "sells" better. It sounds mysterious and stuff, but it is easier to remember and spell than the other one.

 

[the tickle wizard]

It must be to do with the derivatives in some way, at a guess?? Wether it be Greek or Latin origins of the words (possibly). Looking into that would probably shed some light on the matter, maybe?

 

[theniteavenger]

One google search lead to another and then I found this beautiful article; https://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/in-excess/201703/tickling-fetishism-explored

Not sure if it's been posted before

 

[Lucidus]

Interesting article, and nice find, though it doesn't answer the question. It does confirm that knismolagnia is derived from knismesis, and that gargalesis is a part of knismolagnia, but doesn't offer an explanation for why the paraphilia is named after a type of tickling that doesn't produce laughter.

Tenebrae might be right, it might be a spelling and pronunciation thing. Oh well. I think I'm just gonna call it "ticklephilia" from now on.

 

[alex]

My hunch is whoever coined the word "knismolagnia" was not aware of the distinction, but the word lasted because there was no other word for it. ("Ticklephile", I think, is of relatively recent origin.)

 

[alex]

It appears the distinction was first made by Hall and Allyn in an 1897 article in the American Journal of Psychology. Speaking of "the strange sensitiveness to minimal tactile impressions all over the body," they wrote, "This paradoxrical phenornenon is so unique so distinct from that caused by stronger pressures on and elsewhere that it should no longer be included under the general term ticklishness, but 6hould have a different name. Pending a better nomenclature we suggest for the former the term knismesis and for the latter the term gargalesis, with the adjectives knismic and gargalic, hyperknismesis and hypergargalesis for excess, etc."