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.
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 H. G. (Herbert George) Wells
This is probably in part due to a deliberate attempt to prolong the act in the East, and in part to a greater nervous erethism among Westerns.
From Studies in the Psychology of Sex, Volume 5 Erotic Symbolism; The Mechanism of Detumescence; The Psychic State in Pregnancy by Havelock Ellis
They lose control over their vasomotor system to some extent as a result of this systemic erethism.
From Psychotherapy by James J. (James Joseph) Walsh
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 James J. (James Joseph) Walsh
He was not really tormented except by a cerebral erethism.
From Là-bas by Keene Wallace
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.
