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MANIA
| Pronunciation (US): |  | (GB): | |
I. (noun)
Sense 1
Meaning:
An irrational but irresistible motive for a belief or action
Synonyms:
Classified under:
Hypernyms ("mania" is a kind of...):
irrational motive (a motivation that is inconsistent with reason or logic)
Hyponyms (each of the following is a kind of "mania"):
agromania (an intense desire to be alone or out in the open)
alcoholism; dipsomania; potomania (an intense persistent desire to drink alcoholic beverages to excess)
egomania (an intense and irresistible love for yourself and concern for your own needs)
kleptomania (an irresistible impulse to steal in the absence of any economic motive)
logomania; logorrhea (pathologically excessive (and often incoherent) talking)
monomania; possession (a mania restricted to one thing or idea)
necromania; necrophilia; necrophilism (an irresistible sexual attraction to dead bodies)
phaneromania (an irresistible desire to pick at superficial body parts (as in obsessive nail-biting))
pyromania (an uncontrollable desire to set fire to things)
trichotillomania (an irresistible urge to pull out your own hair)
Derivation:
manic (affected with or marked by frenzy or mania uncontrolled by reason)
Sense 2
Meaning:
A mood disorder; an affective disorder in which the victim tends to respond excessively and sometimes violently
Synonyms:
mania; manic disorder
Classified under:
Nouns denoting stable states of affairs
Hypernyms ("mania" is a kind of...):
affective disorder; emotional disorder; emotional disturbance; major affective disorder (any mental disorder not caused by detectable organic abnormalities of the brain and in which a major disturbance of emotions is predominant)
Hyponyms (each of the following is a kind of "mania"):
craze; delirium; frenzy; fury; hysteria (state of violent mental agitation)
Derivation:
manic (affected with or marked by frenzy or mania uncontrolled by reason)
Context examples:
An examination showed she had indeed developed mania of a dangerous and permanent form.
(The Return of Sherlock Holmes, by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle)
After this Amy subsided, till a mania for sketching from nature set her to haunting river, field, and wood, for picturesque studies, and sighing for ruins to copy.
(Little Women, by Louisa May Alcott)
A less severe form of mania characterized by elevated mood, hyperactivity, and grandiosity.
(Hypomania, NCI Thesaurus)
Hans tried to conceal his homicidal mania, and he would say to his wife: "By and by you will want me to kill him, and then I will not kill him. It would make me sick."
(Love of Life and Other Stories, by Jack London)
His manias make a startling combination.
(Dracula, by Bram Stoker)
A stout Frenchman, who knew the Emperor, came to indulge his mania for dancing, and Lady de Jones, a British matron, adorned the scene with her little family of eight.
(Little Women, by Louisa May Alcott)
It almost seems as though the captain had been seized with some kind of mania before he had got well into blue water, and that this had developed persistently throughout the voyage.
(Dracula, by Bram Stoker)
He was possessed with a mania for patronizing Yankee ingenuity, and seeing his friends fitly furnished forth.
(Little Women, by Louisa May Alcott)
If so, we must look out for squalls, for a strong man with homicidal and religious mania at once might be dangerous.
(Dracula, by Bram Stoker)
