Definitions
American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition
- n. Abnormal irritability or sensitivity of an organ or a body part to stimulation.
Century Dictionary and Cyclopedia
- n. In physiology, excitement or stimulation of any organ or tissue, specifically of the organs of generation: as, the sexual erethism.
Wiktionary
- n. Abnormal excitement of a bodily organ or tissue.
- n. Any unusual or morbid over-excitement.
GNU Webster's 1913
- n. A morbid degree of excitement or irritation in an organ.
WordNet 3.0
- n. an abnormally high degree of irritability or sensitivity to stimulation of an organ or body part
Etymologies
- French éréthisme, from Greek erethisma, a provocation, from erethizein, to irritate.
Examples
“Inhalation of mercury vapor over a long period may cause mercurialism which is characterized by fine tremors and erethism ...”
“Inhalation of mercury vapor over a long period may cause mercurialism which is characterized by fine tremors and erethism" "" Erethism may be manifested by abnormal shyness, blushing, self-consciousness, depression or despondency, resentment of criticism, irritability or excitability, headache, fatigue and insomnia.”
THE MERCURY MISCHIEF: As Obama Warns of Hazards, the FDA Approves Mercury Dental Fillings
“The intense excitement of the events had no doubt left my perceptive powers in a state of erethism.”
“But erethism, as we shall see in another chapter upon the analysis of the sex impulse, is not confined to the sexual organs, but is distributed throughout the entire body, especially through the vascular and nervous systems.”
A Preliminary Study of the Emotion of Love between the Sexes
“Normally, there appears to be no erethism of the sexual organs during the process of love-making.”
A Preliminary Study of the Emotion of Love between the Sexes
“Until the climax of the sexual erethism, woman is for man the acme of supreme desire; but with detumescence the emotions tend to swing to the opposite pole, and excitement and longing are forgotten in the mood of repugnance and exhaustion.”
“The Professor, already exacerbated by the study of the humanities, was in a state of acute erethism.”
“This is probably in part due to a deliberate attempt to prolong the act in the East, and in part to a greater nervous erethism among Westerns.”
“We have seen that the chief of these normal foci are situated in the orificial regions where skin and mucous membrane meet, and that the contact of any two orificial regions between two persons of different sex brought together under favorable conditions is apt, when prolonged, to produce a very intense degree of sexual erethism.”
Studies in the Psychology of Sex, Volume 4 Sexual Selection In Man
“In the same way, I am acquainted with the ease of a lady not usually sensitive to simple body odors (though affected by perfumes and flowers) who on one occasion, when already in a state of sexual erethism, was highly excited when perceiving the odor of her lover's axilla.”
Studies in the Psychology of Sex, Volume 4 Sexual Selection In Man
Lists
These user-created lists contain the word ‘erethism’.
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Logolepsy
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Fetishes, Erotica & Descriptive Smut
Sexually charged words, or those that could be. Sexual innuendos are mighty welcome.
lubricious, turgid, tumescent, tumid, feverish, mons, mons veneris, prurient, ophidian, houri, cyprian, licentious and 41 more...
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