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  1. nympholepsy love

Definitions

American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition

  1. n. A frenzy supposed by ancient peoples to have been induced by nymphs.
  2. n. An emotional frenzy.

Century Dictionary and Cyclopedia

  1. n. An ecstasy; a divine frenzy.

Wiktionary

  1. n. A frenzied state of (usually erotic) emotion, especially concerning something or someone unattainable.

GNU Webster's 1913

  1. n. rare A species of demoniac enthusiasm or possession coming upon one who had accidentally looked upon a nymph; ecstasy.

WordNet 3.0

  1. n. a frenzy of emotion; as for something unattainable

Etymologies

  1. nympho- + -lepsy (Wiktionary)
  2. From nympholept. (American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition)

Examples

  • “A terrible malady is she, a malady the ancients knew of and called nympholepsy -- a beautiful name evocative and symbolic of its ideal aspect,”

    Confessions of a Young Man

  • “The word we want is "nympholepsy", which doesn't quite mean what you think it means.”

    The Guardian World News

  • “London, 1821, entitled _Two Pairs of Historical Portraits_, in which an attempt is made to trace a minute resemblance between the characters and careers of Rienzi and the First Napoleon.)] [494] {415} [The word "nympholepsy" may be paraphrased as "ecstatic vision.”

    The Works of Lord Byron. Vol. 2

  • “It is this repetition—not the nympholepsy itself, but the endless recurrence of its self-imprisoning instants—that eventually dooms and destroys Humbert.”

    Archive 2009-10-01

  • “The seduction of Lolita exists in discrete moments that are sufficient in themselves to constitute the heaven and hell of nympholepsy.”

    Archive 2009-10-01

  • “Here he is, at last, an admitted pedophile—no longer “an artist and a madman, a creature of infinite melancholy,” who seeks to fancy up his crime by calling it nympholepsy instead.”

    Archive 2009-02-01

  • “How often have _we_ -- martyrs to a hopeless nympholepsy -- strayed through that piazza, at the self same hour -- there deemed that the heart would break -- but never thought that it might slowly wither.”

    A Love Story

  • “When the show was over he abandoned Miss Clampett on her door-step and went to his own boarding-house in a nympholepsy.”

    We Can't Have Everything

  • “But he was busy with his new story, in the throes of nympholepsy, seeing visions, hearing voices.”

    We Can't Have Everything

  • “De Quincey has done so in prose, for instance, and Lord Byron talks of 'The nympholepsy of a fond despair,' though he never was accused of being overridden by his Greek.”

    The Letters of Elizabeth Barrett Browning

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synonyms (1)

Words with the same meaning

  1. ecstasy

hypernyms (5)

Words that are more generic or abstract

  1. delirium
  1. frenzy
  1. hysteria
  1. fury
  1. craze

reverse dictionary (2)

Words that contain this word in their definition

  1. nympholeptic
  1. nympholept

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‘nympholepsy’ has been looked up 1815 times, loved by 7 people, added to 25 lists, and has a Scrabble score of 26.