convulsionary

American  

[kuhn-vuhl-shuh-ner-ee] / kənˈvʌl ʃəˌnɛr i /

adjective

1. of or affected with convulsion.

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noun

• convulsionaries
  plural

1. a person who has convulsions, especially as a result of religious experience.

Other Word Forms

Noun Inflected Forms

• convulsionaries
  plural

Etymology

Origin of convulsionary

First recorded in 1735–45; convulsion + -ary

Example Sentences

See Examples For:

convulsionary convulsionaries

As that youth was an useless, false, convulsionary, and hysterical patient, no one was likely to want to keep him, if he could do better.

From Historical Mysteries by Andrew Lang

Certain diseases which appear to be more mental than physical sometimes occur so numerously as to assume an epidemic form, such as St. Vitus's dance, convulsionary diseases, or suicidal mania.

From The New Gresham Encyclopedia Volume 4, Part 2: Ebert to Estremadura by Various

Formerly rude and convulsionary forces were actively at work, to compel chaos into anarchy and anarchy into order.

From In the Oregon Country Out-Doors in Oregon, Washington, and California Together with some Legendary Lore, and Glimpses of the Modern West in the Making by George Palmer Putnam

Madame de Staël has something of it; St. Pierre; and down onwards to the present astonishing convulsionary ‘Literature of Desperation,’ it is everywhere abundant.

From Sartor Resartus, and On Heroes, Hero-Worship, and the Heroic in History by Thomas Carlyle

At considerable intervals I had two or three attacks of convulsionary fits.

From The Opium Habit by Horace B. Day

Mocked by life, mankind becomes "a race of convulsionaries at the center of a cosmic farce."

From Time Magazine Archive

These arts become lucrative and are backed by the cleverest men, and by the apparent evidence of prophecies by convulsionaries.

From The Making of Religion by Andrew Lang

So that with the assistance of his possessed, his proselytes, or his convulsionaries, he procured testimonies, which from his own mouth would have been very suspicious, and might have rendered him odious.

From Ecce Homo! A Critical Inquiry into the History of Jesus of Nazareth: Being a Rational Analysis of the Gospels by Paul Henry Thiry Baron d' Holbach

The wholesome sunlight burst into the room, and checked, as if by magic, the unseemly mumming of these deluded convulsionaries.

From The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 13, No. 80, June, 1864 by Various

I have seen the whirling and howling dervishes at Constantinople, whose strange and frightful performances can be compared only to those of the medieval convulsionaries.

From Travels in the Steppes of the Caspian Sea, the Crimea, the Caucasus, &c. by Xavier Hommaire de Hell