psychoneurotic
Americanadjective
Etymology
Origin of psychoneurotic
First recorded in 1900–05; psycho- + neurotic 1
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.
A 1971 ad, for Valium, is about a woman called “low self-esteem” Jan, who never married because she is “psychoneurotic” — if only she could be sedated into perfect motherhood.
From New York Times
Each war loses a generation; one era’s maniac is, in Huston’s time, suffering from a “psychoneurotic” disorder.
From The New Yorker
During the height of the feminist movement in the 1960s and 1970s, Valium advertisements depicted “psychoneurotic” women like “Jan” who required pharmaceutical treatment because of their failure or refusal to attract husbands.
From MSNBC
They really embody the character that has so long been attributed to the psychoneurotic symptom.
From Project Gutenberg
Usually when the word dreads is used, it is meant to signify a series of psychic or psychoneurotic conditions from which sensitive, nervous people suffer a great deal.
From Project Gutenberg
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.
