erethism
Americannoun
noun
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physiol an abnormally high degree of irritability or sensitivity in any part of the body
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psychiatry
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a personality disorder resulting from mercury poisoning
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an abnormal tendency to become aroused quickly, esp sexually, as the result of a verbal or psychic stimulus
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Other Word Forms
Etymology
Origin of erethism
1790–1800; < French éréthisme < Greek erethismós irritation, equivalent to ereth ( ízein ) to irritate + -ismos -ism
Example Sentences
Examples are provided to illustrate real-world usage of words in context. Any opinions expressed do not reflect the views of Dictionary.com.
They lose control over their vasomotor system to some extent as a result of this systemic erethism.
From Psychotherapy by Walsh, James J. (James Joseph)
The intense excitement of the events had no doubt left my perceptive powers in a state of erethism.
From The War of the Worlds by Wells, H. G. (Herbert George)
They are irritable in the nervous sense and excitable, and this erethism increases their nervous instability which responds by craving further excitement.
From Religion And Health by Walsh, James J. (James Joseph)
He was not really tormented except by a cerebral erethism.
From Là-bas by Wallace, Keene
It is employed without success in local phlegmorrhagies of the lungs; but it almost invariably cures those chronic catarrhs, which depend on a state of erethism of the mucous lining of the bronchiæ.
From North American Medical and Surgical Journal, Vol. 2, No. 3, July, 1826 by Bache, Franklin
Definitions and idiom definitions from Dictionary.com Unabridged, based on the Random House Unabridged Dictionary, © Random House, Inc. 2023
Idioms from The American Heritage® Idioms Dictionary copyright © 2002, 2001, 1995 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company.
