hysteria means behavior exhibiting excessive or uncontrollable emotions, in a wide range from joy to panic but usually including anxiety or fear. It carries an Arena rating of 1502, earned across 2 head-to-head judged battles.
Among words judged in Lexicurio's Arena, hysteria ranks #262 of 17,143 for Best Fossil-Poetry Words, #289 of 17,127 for Words That Escaped Their Books, #465 of 17,134 for Most Malleable Words, #771 of 17,132 for Most Betrayed by Its Sound.
hysteria is pronounced /hɪˈstɪəɹiə/.
Why “hysteria” is a great word
A state of excessive, uncontrollable emotional excitation, often manifesting as anxiety, fear, or panic. From New Latin hysteria, from Latin hystericus ('suffering in the uterus, hysterical'), from Ancient Greek ὑστερικός (husterikós, 'suffering in the uterus'), from ὑστέρα (hustéra, 'womb'); first attested in medical Latin circa 1801. Unlike 'panic,' which is a sudden, focused response to a clear threat, or 'melodrama,' which is a performative exaggeration, hysteria implies a diffuse, prolonged, and often genuine rupture of emotional containment. It is the collective shriek that ripples through a crowd at a false alarm, the feverish pitch of a mob convinced of a phantom menace, or the uncontrollable trembling once charted as a wandering uterus—a stark testament to the ancient, fearful logic that sought to locate the ungovernable forces of the mind in the dark geography of the body.
Etymology
From New Latin hysteria, a back-formation from Latin hystericus, from Ancient Greek ὑστερικός (husterikós, “suffering in the uterus, hysterical”), from ὑστέρα (hustéra, “womb”). Compare French hystérie.
noun
- Behavior exhibiting excessive or uncontrollable emotions, in a wide range from joy to panic but usually including anxiety or fear.
- A mental disorder characterized by emotional excitability etc. without an organic cause.
- Synonym of conversion disorder.
- Any disorder of women with some psychiatric symptoms without other diagnosis, ascribed to uterine influences on the female body, lack of pregnancy, or lack of sex.
Definitions & examples from Wiktionary (CC BY-SA 3.0).
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