Definitions

from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 5th Edition.

  • noun Mental retardation.
  • noun Lack of development of intellectual capacity as a result of inadequate brain tissue.

from The Century Dictionary.

  • noun Imbecility of mind; idiocy or dotage. Formerly sometimes called amenty.

from the GNU version of the Collaborative International Dictionary of English.

  • noun (Med.) Imbecility; total lack of understanding.

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License.

  • noun Mental impairment; state of being mentally handicapped.

from WordNet 3.0 Copyright 2006 by Princeton University. All rights reserved.

  • noun extreme mental retardation

Etymologies

from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 4th Edition

[Latin āmentia, mental derangement, from āmēns, āment-, out of one's mind, mentally deranged : ā-, ab-, out of; see ab– + mēns, mind; see men- in Indo-European roots.]

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License

From Latin āmentia ("madness; senselessness"), from āmēns ("mad, insane; foolish"), from ab ("from, away from") + mēns ("mind").

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Examples

  • In dementia the mental aberration does not occur until the mind has become fully developed, thus differing from amentia, which is congenital or comes on very early in life.

    Aids to Forensic Medicine and Toxicology

  • = Cretinism = is a form of amentia, which is endemic in certain districts, especially in some of the valleys of Switzerland, Savoy, and France.

    Aids to Forensic Medicine and Toxicology

  • Sometimes the speech is adequate in amount but conveys little information because it is overconcrete, overabstract, repetitive, or stereotyped (poverty of content). amentia Subnormal development of the mind, with particular reference to intellectual capacities; a type of severe mental retardation. anosognosia The apparent unawareness of or failure to recognize one†™ s own functional defect apathy Lack of feeling, emotion, interest, or concern.

    Think Progress » Bush Claims Program That Monitors Tens of Millions of Americans ‘Strictly Targets Al Qaeda’ 2006

  • Tantamque victoriam amentia hominum consequuti sunt, ut si colligere in unum velis, universum orbem istis scelestibus spiritibus subjectum fuisse invenies: Usque ad Salvaloris adventum hominum caede perniciosissimos daemones placabant, &c.

    Anatomy of Melancholy 2007

  • Acute miliary tuberculosis may produce the impression of a general paresis or of an amentia in Meynert's sense.

    The Journal of Abnormal Psychology 1916

  • According to Ziehen, most of these nephritic psychoses run the course of what he calls hallucinatory paranoia (it may be remembered that Ziehen counts among paranoias a number of acute diseases and even so-called Meynert's amentia).

    The Journal of Abnormal Psychology 1916

  • Binswanger states that tuberculosis, aside from miliary tuberculosis or meningitis, produces no mental disorder except phenomena of the amentia of exhaustion.

    The Journal of Abnormal Psychology 1916

  • A conversation with almost any rural teacher will impress upon one the fact that the teacher is loath to declare feeble-minded a child whose records give unmistakable evidence of amentia and that she generally regards the child as merely dull.

    Rural Problems of Today 1911

  • The information gathered indicates that epilepsy and the neurotic predisposition to insanity need to be investigated as well as amentia, [5] and that the epileptics and neurotics, even among rural children, are more numerous than is usually supposed.

    Rural Problems of Today 1911

  • Illegitimacy holds in the problem of rural feeble-mindedness the same position that prostitution occupies in urban amentia.

    Rural Problems of Today 1911

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