an intense but short-lived fashion; craze
a personal idiosyncrasy or whim
1825–35; noun use of dial. fad to look after things, busy oneself with trifles, back formation from obsolete faddle to play with, fondle. See fiddle
If it’s all the rage, everybody’s into it, your parents don’t get it, and teenage girls across the globe are trying to outdo each other with it, it’s officially a fad. From hairstyles to hula hoops to saying “that’s hot,” fads are known to rise to crazed levels of popularity seemingly overnight. But they fade out just as fast, leaving late adopters with outdated sayings and some seriously uncool shoes. Much like a fad itself, no one has any real idea where this word came from. But it’s still in fashion some 144 years later.
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Both Lazzareschi and Diaz have more “KPop Demon Hunters”-inspired events coming up, but Tzagournis believes the peak of the fad has already passed — at least for now.
From Los Angeles Times • Apr. 29, 2026
Tim Cook steps down as Apple’s CEO, RFK Jr. furthers the peptides fad, and The Onion finally gets InfoWars.
From Slate • Apr. 25, 2026
My favorite recent social media fad is tweens and young teens designing their own countries, complete with flags, customs and governing aesthetics.
From The Wall Street Journal • Apr. 20, 2026
In the wake of an anticipated fiber craze that is expected to trump last year’s protein-maxxing dietary fad, chia seeds have become all the rage.
From Salon • Mar. 31, 2026
Briony was lost to her writing fantasies—what had seemed a passing fad was now an enveloping obsession.
From "Atonement" by Ian McEwan
Definitions and idiom definitions from Dictionary.com Unabridged, based on the Random House Unabridged Dictionary, © Random House, Inc. 2023
Idioms from The American Heritage® Idioms Dictionary copyright © 2002, 2001, 1995 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company.
