| Library / English Dictionary |
HYSTERICS
| Pronunciation (US): |  | (GB): | |
I. (noun)
Sense 1
Meaning:
An attack of hysteria
Classified under:
Nouns denoting stable states of affairs
Hypernyms ("hysterics" is a kind of...):
attack (a sudden occurrence of an uncontrollable condition)
Context examples:
THEN she fell into hysterics again, and he was so frightened that he would send for Mr. Donavan, and Mr. Donavan found the house in all this uproar.
(Sense and Sensibility, by Jane Austen)
He has denied to me since that it was hysterics, and insisted that it was only his sense of humour asserting itself under very terrible conditions.
(Dracula, by Bram Stoker)
That, in the fabric of knowledge, there should be any connection whatever between a woman with hysterics and a schooner carrying a weather-helm or heaving to in a gale, would have struck him as ridiculous and impossible.
(Martin Eden, by Jack London)
Could swim like a duck, paddled round the castle till he came to a little door guarded by two stout fellows, knocked their heads together till they cracked like a couple of nuts, then, by a trifling exertion of his prodigious strength, he smashed in the door, went up a pair of stone steps covered with dust a foot thick, toads as big as your fist, and spiders that would frighten you into hysterics, Miss March.
(Little Women, by Louisa May Alcott)
The hysterics called up Peggotty.
(David Copperfield, by Charles Dickens)
Marianne gave a violent start, fixed her eyes upon Elinor, saw her turning pale, and fell back in her chair in hysterics.
(Sense and Sensibility, by Jane Austen)
I thought that the Professor was going to break down and have hysterics, just as he had when Lucy died, but with a great effort he controlled himself and was at perfect nervous poise when Mrs. Harker tripped into the room, bright and happy-looking and, in the doing of work, seemingly forgetful of her misery.
(Dracula, by Bram Stoker)
She fell into violent hysterics immediately, with such screams as reached your brother's ears, as he was sitting in his own dressing-room down stairs, thinking about writing a letter to his steward in the country.
(Sense and Sensibility, by Jane Austen)
He and I had a great deal of talk about it; and the best of all is, that he is gone back again to Harley Street, that he may be within call when Mrs. Ferrars is told of it, for she was sent for as soon as ever my cousins left the house, for your sister was sure SHE would be in hysterics too; and so she may, for what I care.
(Sense and Sensibility, by Jane Austen)
