swivet

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Do you march to the beat of a different drummer? Discover 
where this term came from in our Dictionary of Allusions.
http://www.merriam-webster.com/cgi-bin/book.pl?allusion.htm&6
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The Word of the Day for March 10 is: 

swivet   \SWIV-ut\   noun 
     : a state of extreme agitation 

Example sentence: 
     The residents of Cedar Hills are in a swivet over the 
state's proposal to extend the highway through their town.

Did you know? 
     People have been in a swivet over one thing or another 
since the 1890s. That, at least, is when the word first appeared 
in print in a collection of "Peculiar Words and Usages" of 
Kentucky published by the American Dialect Society. In the 
ensuing years, "swivet" popped up in other pockets of the South 
as well. Chances are it had already been around for some time 
before it was recorded in writing, and by the time it was, 
nobody could say where or how it had originated. What we do know 
is that its use gradually spread, so that by the 1950s it was 
regularly appearing in national magazines like _Time_ and _The 
New Yorker_. Thus, it entered the mainstream of American English.