Definitions
American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition
- n. Behavior exhibiting excessive or uncontrollable emotion, such as fear or panic.
- n. A mental disorder characterized by emotional excitability and sometimes by amnesia or a physical deficit, such as paralysis, or a sensory deficit, without an organic cause.
Century Dictionary and Cyclopedia
- n. A nervous disease involving no recognizable anatomical lesion, characterized by unrestrained desire to attract. attention and sympathy, more or less coordinated convulsions, globus and clavus hystericus, anæsthesia, hyperæsthesia, motor paralysis, vasomotor derangements, etc. Women are much more frequently affected in this way than men. Also called hysterics.
Wiktionary
- n. Behavior exhibiting excessive or uncontrollable emotion, such as fear or panic.
- n. medicine A mental disorder characterized by emotional excitability etc. without an organic cause.
GNU Webster's 1913
- n. (Med.) A nervous affection, occurring almost exclusively in women, in which the emotional and reflex excitability is exaggerated, and the will power correspondingly diminished, so that the patient loses control over the emotions, becomes the victim of imaginary sensations, and often falls into paroxism or fits.
WordNet 3.0
- n. excessive or uncontrollable fear
- n. neurotic disorder characterized by violent emotional outbreaks and disturbances of sensory and motor functions
- n. state of violent mental agitation
Etymologies
- From New Latin hysteria, from hysteric, from Latin hystericus, from Ancient Greek ὑστερικός (hysterikos, "suffering in the uterus, hysterical"), from ὑστέρα (hustera, "womb"). Confer French hystérie. (Wiktionary)
- New Latin : hyster(ic) + -ia1. (American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition)
Examples
“His theories took hold in American psychiatry, and the term hysteria came to mean “emotionally charged situations … symbolic of underlying conflicts.””
“Hippocrates, the “father of medicine” whose healing oath is revered to this day, used the term hysteria to describe overwhelming fear, sometimes accompanied by unexplained physical symptoms or loss of self-control.”
“The word hysteria comes from the Greek word for uterus.”
“The term "hysteria" comes from the Greek word for "womb" and refers to a disease that was once diagnosed almost exclusively in women.”
“The term hysteria was coined by Hippocrates, who thought that suffocation and madness arose in women whose uteri had become too light and dry from lack of sexual intercourse and, as a result, wandered upward, compressing the heart, lungs, and diaphragm.”
“The apogee of this hysteria is attained with a sign right where the speed bump is located: it shouts tope! accompanied by an arrow belatedly directing the eye downward, at the axle-thumper presumably.”
“William James had this tautology in mind when, remarking on another disease that doctors no longer believe to exist, he wrote, “The name hysteria, it must be remembered, is not an explanation of anything, but merely the title of a new set of problems.””
“COSTELLO: ACORN is trying to quiet what it calls hysteria, coming from conservative circles.”
“When she suffers fainting spells, her superiors criticize what they call her hysteria and give her a whip for self-flagellation.”
“I recognize also, having those memories of the McCarthy period, that while this hysteria is actually one of the most odious things about the recurrent pattern of American politics it serves a psychological purpose.”
Lists
These user-created lists contain the word ‘hysteria’.
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EN - fine scholarly language
exhort, accretion, twenty-nine, atrophy, additive, brilliantly, interreligious, empiricism, pathologic, limitless, half-century, vigilant and 488 more...
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GRE Barrons Wordlist
A complete Barron's Wordlist for GRE preparation. Your online flashcard replacement.
abase, abash, abate, abbreviate, abdicate, aberrant, aberration, abet, abeyance, abhor, abject, abjure and 4087 more...
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religion
who is this god person, anyway? (--Douglas Adams)
sachristy, vestry, diocese, papal, cardinal, pope, polygamy, seven, father, chaplain, vestments, blessing and 227 more...
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Unfamiliar Words
dank, refrain, hostage, frigid, warden, atrocious, squirm, kinship, riot, counterfeit, stamped, scaffolding and 59 more...
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big book gre
abase, abbess, abbey, abbot, abdicate, abdomen, abdominal, abduction, abed, aberration, abet, abeyance and 6691 more...
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the first list
an immense, grandiloquent list that loads like a thousand years sentence in stone. new words are in the other lists.
ridiculous, brummagem, predicament, sanctimonious, vapid, eschew, admonish, auspicious, capitulation, enumerate, lachrymose, tenet and 1648 more...
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ChortleGiggleSnort
Significant Words- Guiding you on your path to Snazzibility
flimsy, feeble, ranting, ramble, narky, snazzy, yoghurt, bulbous, pustule, globulous, geranium, megalomaniac and 521 more...
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kat's words
ecumenical, cacophony, clatter, marimba, bamboo, saffron, slice, mercurial, pomegranate, cranky, slipshod, scritch and 511 more...
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slumry's Words
cattywampus, ingratiate, lackadaisical, exactitude, exfoliate, fulminate, circumnavigation, circuitous, debride, sidle, sequester, chicory and 1002 more...
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words found to be generally pleasing
alabaster, mahogany, camphor, coalesce, spire, portmanteau, gadabout, palaver, dolor, dour, dun, luminesce and 610 more...
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spicolli's Words
terrapin, ravenous, fuck, sepulchral, garlic, suss, queer, curmudgeon, foodie, intricate, omphalos, subversion and 534 more...
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Favorites
machiavellian, mercurial, deus ex machina, synecdoche, litotes, phallic, freudian, metonymy, chrestomathy, falsifiable, gestalt, truthiness and 211 more...
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My Words
Words that I use regularly and consider mine.
zen, poser, savvy, angst, flustered, bitter, whatsoever, farfetched, indeed, scenario, inevitable, salvage and 134 more...
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cloudjuice's Words
schadenfreude, sordid, promulgate, erratic, erroneous, amalgamate, sesquipedalian, incongruous, psychosis, etymology, simulacrum, serendipity and 988 more...
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Reading Random
Got unknown words randomly
delinquency, modicum, dissuade, incendiary, destitute, lachrymose, plight, ruse, empirical, pedantic, demography, giggle and 444 more...
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Papageno's Words, Pt. I
hobbledehoy, absquatulate, chthonic, prolix, ululate, internecine, verisimilitude, animadversion, concupiscence, vertiginous, cucullate, lucubrate and 1554 more...
Tweets
Looking for tweets for hysteria.
vanishedone T.L.S.: 'Hysteria is a rum sort of subject these days. It has officially disappeared as a disease, wiped out of existence in the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of the American Psychiatric Association, the bible of contemporary psychiatry, and hysterics themselves seem to have vanished from psychiatrists’ and neurologists’ waiting rooms. Lay people still use the term with abandon, generally with reference to women who make a spectacle of their extreme emotional lability. But an illness that has a history dating all the way back to the time of Hippocrates is no longer respectable or recognized in medical circles. In the words of one of its best-known modern historians, Etienne Trillat, “L’hystérie est morte, c’est entendu�?. ' Jan 21, 2009
lampbane "It's bugging me, grating me
And twisting me around
Yeah I'm endlessly caving in
And turning inside out" Jan 9, 2007