Some background first: I was reading about the futility that has become the Cleveland Cavaliers’ NBA season after Lebron James’s departure in the newspaper of the Plains Dealer, when I came across this sentence quoting Antwan Jamison:
“It’s like Groundhog Day every day,” Jamison admitted of their epic losing streak.
What does this mean? Yes, I’ve read up on and know what Groundhog Day literally is: a holiday that celebrates a quaint folk tradition of determining the seasons. But I would have thought that a metaphor or an idiom involving the day would give an indeterminate or anticipatory impression, while Jamison’s construction here makes it seem like its usage is uniformly negative.
So I was wondering, does anyone know if there's something interesting in the history of this holiday that would explain this particular negative usage? How was the phrase coined?
I’d also be interested in knowing whether this is a common term in certain areas of the country, as I’ve never heard it before, and the demographics of the sort of people who use this phrase.
Best Answer
To provide a smidge more detail, the movie Groundhog Day is about a man reliving the same day over and over and over. Every time he wakes up it's Groundhog Day again, and people always say the same things and do the same things over and over, and he's the only one who is aware of the infinite repetition and who is capable of doing things differently.