Hysterical Woman's definitions

backpacking

Traveling around with only a backpack on your back. This method of travel is usually associated with youth, but people of all ages backpack.

I had a great time backpacking Europe.

by Hysterical Woman August 2, 2010

hostel

A cheap accommodation for students and other budget travelers. Usually consisting of dorm-style rooms, but you can get private rooms at some. They are more common in Europe, but there are some in North America.

There is a hostel in a castle in Scotland.

by Hysterical Woman August 2, 2010

Middlebrow

Art that tries to be highbrow, but really isn't. Status-seeking middle class people buy middlebrow work to display, not to enjoy. Writer Virginia Woolfe famously decried middlebrow as "a sticky slime of calves-foot jelly", though her work could be classified as middlebrow too. Still, as long as you actually read the books you buy instead of just using them to set of the furniture, who cares?

My family library is so middlebrow: all leather-bound editions of the Great Works. Still, I enjoyed looking at the pictures as a kid.

by Hysterical Woman July 23, 2010

gladiator movies

Movies of muscular half-naked men from back when gay meant happy.

Do you like to watch gladiator movies?

by Hysterical Woman April 23, 2006

spilt milk

Some unimportant problem, as in the pharse "don't cry over split milk".

It's just split milk.

by Hysterical Woman May 31, 2004