nosomania

Etymology

From noso- + -mania.

nosomania means A form of hypochondria involving a morbid belief that one is suffering from an unusual disease. Lexicurio rates it Sui generis — a strength score of 87 out of 100.

Why “nosomania” is a great word

NOSOMANIA — [Noun] A fixed, delusional conviction that one suffers from a specific, unusual, and often exotic disease. From the Greek nosos ("disease") + -mania ("madness, frenzy"). Unlike nosophobia, which denotes an irrational fear of contracting illness, or hypochondria, which suggests a general, anxious preoccupation with health, nosomania is a private prison of certainty. It manifests as the patient meticulously documenting phantom lesions, hearing the larvae of a tropical parasite in a common tinnitus, and feeling the precise, unnatural cold of a fictional gangrene in a perfectly warm limb—a solitary imprisonment within a body that has become a theater for an unseen and singular tragedy.

noun

A form of hypochondria involving a morbid belief that one is suffering from an unusual disease