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

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Etymology

Origin of convulsionary

First recorded in 1735–45; convulsion + -ary

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Example Sentences

See Examples For:

convulsionary convulsionaries

The joy and sorrow of Stevenson was to find a society "in much the same convulsionary and transitional state" as the Highlands and Islands after 1745.

From The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 1 (of 25) by Andrew Lang

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

He was a convulsionary, and his head would be found wedged into tight places whence it could hardly be extracted. 

From Cock Lane and Common-Sense by Andrew Lang

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

From On Heroes and Hero Worship and the Heroic in History by Thomas Carlyle

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

From Time Magazine Archive

The convulsionaries of St. Medard, as they were called, assembled in great numbers round the tomb of their favourite saint, the Jansenist priest Paris, and taught one another how to fall into convulsions.

From Memoirs of Extraordinary Popular Delusions — Volume 3 by Charles Mackay

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

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

The convulsionaries of our own days seem to have revived them; posterity will be surprised at them, as we laugh at them now.

From The Phantom World or, The philosophy of spirits, apparitions, &c, &c. by Henry Christmas

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