Word.ws English Dictionary

frontrunneritis

frontrunneritis noun: a supposed affliction said to cause someone, especially a political candidate, to struggle as soon as they become a front runner.

Noun

frontrunneritis (uncountable)

  1. (informal) A supposed affliction said to cause someone, especially a political candidate, to struggle as soon as they become a front runner.
    • "This is sort of the fourth generation of front-runner-itis he's suffered through," said Carney. "First it was that he was hiding in Austin and not campaigning. Then it was all he cared about was money. Then it was 'he's afraid to debate.' Now it's that he's not substantive enough. I don't know if...1999 December 9, Mark Z. Barabak, quoting David Carney, “Bush's Winning Glow Dims After Poor Debate Reviews”, in Los Angeles Times, Los Angeles, Calif.: Los Angeles Times Communications, →ISSN...
    • Yes, FrontRunneritis is a terrible disease. Lyndon Johnson had it. Ed Muskie had it. Howard Dean had it. Candidates for all levels of office catch it.2007 October 8, Peter Fenn, “FrontRunneritis”, in The Hill, Washington, D.C.: Nexstar Media Inc., →ISSN, →OCLC, archived from the original on 27 Apr 2024

Forms of frontrunneritis

alternative formfront-runneritis
alternative formfront-runner-itis
alternative formfrontrunner-itis

Origin of frontrunneritis

From front runner + -itis.

Questions about frontrunneritis

What does frontrunneritis mean?
Frontrunneritis means a supposed affliction said to cause someone, especially a political candidate, to struggle as soon as they become a front runner.
What part of speech is frontrunneritis?
Frontrunneritis is a noun.

Words near frontrunneritis in the dictionary

  1. frontperson
  2. frontroom
  3. frontrun
  4. frontrunner
  5. frontrunner-itis
  6. frontrunneritis
  7. frontrunners
  8. frontrunning
  9. fronts
  10. fronts off
  11. fronts on

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: frontrunneritis (page history and authors). Text available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 license. Word.ws reformatted the entry and added links. Wiktionary data of 2026-09-02.

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Pronunciation audio from Wikimedia Commons, each file under its own free license: LL-Q1860 (eng)-Flame, not lame-frontrunneritis.wav.

Cite this entry: “frontrunneritis.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/frontrunneritis. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.