psychoneurotic

[sahy-koh-noo-rot-ik, -nyoo-]

adjective

1. neurotic.

Word History and Origins

Origin of psychoneurotic¹

First recorded in 1900–05; psycho- + neurotic ¹

Example Sentences

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.

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Each war loses a generation; one era’s maniac is, in Huston’s time, suffering from a “psychoneurotic” disorder.

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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.

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They really embody the character that has so long been attributed to the psychoneurotic symptom.

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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.

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Related Words

• compulsive 
• distraught 
• disturbed 
• manic 
• obsessive