Language has many purposes; the chief one is communication. It can also be a means for artistic expression. Nearly every profession has its own lexicon to convey complex information in a concise way. Medicine is full of them. Medical words used in psychiatry can be rather hoity-toity but often they are just jolly good fun to throw around.
Here are a few of my favorites which I use in medical reports and to bore the pants off of others at parties.
Learn a few of these lovelies and you too can sound like a pompous doc !
Akathisia < this is a restless nervous sense of not being able to sit still; ‘ants in the pants’.
Confabulation < telling whopping tales all false and made up but without realizing you are doing so. Often seen in those with dementia or voted for Sarah Palin.
Dwam < a mindless state of being, induced by looking out the window while in a train or car. It is accompanied with a blank expression on the face. “Hello? Didn’t you hear what I said?” “Oh, sorry I was in a dwam”. It is better than admitting what your were really thinking which was Jack Gyllenhaal (see below: satyriasis).
Dysania < An extreme difficulty of getting up and going in the morning. If the word is too fancy for you, use “Mondays” as a synonym.
Enantiodromia < The creation of a state of being when you tried so hard to avoid that by being its opposite you create the very thing you are trying so hard to avoid. Example: someone who goes out of their way “not to be a burden to others” who end up being a pain in the neck.
Hypnagogic < an adjective to describe things happening in the transition from wakefulness to sleep or the other way around. Lots of quasi-hallucinations and confusion happen in this gray zone.
Kummerspeck < A German word which exactly translates into ‘worry bacon”. It is the word used to describe weight gain induced from emotional eating. I don’t use it much as nobody eats when they are upset, do they now.
Logorrhea < the “opposite end” of diarrhea; oral diarrhea, excessive motor mouth talking, which keeps on spewing.
Parapraxis < the actual word for a ‘Freudian slip”. This is a mistaken statement, which happens when you say one thing but really meant your mother.
Satyriasis < the male equivalent of nymphomania: the compulsion to have sex with as many men as possible. I am quite skilled at helping those with this condition, but the treatment is a long and hard.
Uhtceare < an old English word from ‘Uht” for predawn and ‘Ceare” for worry. This describes waking up at 4AM anxious and depressed with the mind racing about all sorts of things.
18 comments
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December 17, 2013 at 9:55 PM
dejeffreys
Hypnagogic is one of my favorite sleep words, and I think I experience satyriasis in this state, if not during a dwam. So I suppose I need your long and hard treatment for my states of being.
December 17, 2013 at 10:31 PM
anne marie in philly
I LOVE “THE FAR SIDE”!
Dysania – me on crappy monday 😦
Enantiodromia – my MIL
Satyriasis – I should live so long to experience THAT! 😉
December 17, 2013 at 10:38 PM
truthspew
Oh you’d love I.T. terms. A lot of it is acronyms. There’s DHCP, OSPF, NTP, NNTP, DNS, BGP, ust to name a few. They stand for Dynamic Host Configuration Protocol, Open Shortest Path First, Network Time Protocol, Network News Transfer Protocol, Dynamic Name Service, Border Gateway Protocol.
December 17, 2013 at 11:12 PM
Rick
“Long and hard” huh? No thanks. I’m not accommodating or the patient type.
December 18, 2013 at 2:35 AM
the cajun
Uhtceare, huh? Well, that’s me down to the ground. Now you’ve given me something else to think about a 4 am as I figure out the proper pronunciation. Thanks! 😉
December 18, 2013 at 5:43 AM
wfregosi
I suffer from Uhtceare with some frequency when I’m approaching deadline on a complex project. To the extent that I have Satyriasis, I have decided courageously not to seek treatment but to deal with it as it comes and push hard through to the end.
December 18, 2013 at 6:10 AM
Urspo
Sometimes the latter is a remedy for the former.
December 18, 2013 at 6:24 AM
Laurent
For the benefit of your readers in Canada could you tell us Dr. Spo what are those terms in French?
December 18, 2013 at 6:47 AM
Urspo
My French is tres horrible, but ‘Tirez la Baguette Disorder” may be a good enough translation. Try it out on a few people you meet in town.
December 19, 2013 at 6:02 PM
Laurent
Non, non, I protest, I think your French is Charmant.
December 18, 2013 at 7:04 AM
Ron
Well, I’m speechless, unlike my friend Bart who does have logorrhea, a word I had to look up because this man never shuts up. He just goes on, and on, and on and on. SHUT UP! He knows he has this condition but he can’t stop. I just knew there was a word for it and now you have confirmed it. Another feeling or condition that I knew there was a word for I recently discovered. This is a condition that I suffer (?) as the way I felt when Romney and the crazy assed Republicans just could not believe they lost the presidential election after the Fox News polls had indicated that had won. I thoroughly enjoyed watching Romney and the rest of those heatless greed heads stammer and stumble their way through thanking their supporters on election night when they had to face the far that THEY LOST. And that word is:
Schadenfreude Listeni/ˈʃɑːdənfrɔɪdə/ (German: [ˈʃaːdənˌfʁɔʏdə]) is pleasure derived from the misfortunes of others.[1] This word is a loanword from German. The literal English translation is ‘Harm-Joy’. It is the feeling of joy or pleasure when one sees another fail or suffer misfortune. It is also borrowed by some other languages.
December 18, 2013 at 9:04 AM
james of the woods
as for confabulation, i now have a new term to describe the southern school of storytelling. one never allows the truth to get in the way of a good story.
December 18, 2013 at 11:28 AM
Urspo
what an excellent quotation! thank you!
December 18, 2013 at 10:15 AM
Old Lurker
What a lovely collection of words. I am particularly enamoured of enantiodromia.
December 18, 2013 at 12:07 PM
Frogdancer
Too many big words first thing in the morning. I need another coffee…
December 18, 2013 at 3:54 PM
jayinva
Yada yada yada. More psychobabble!
Peace ❤
Jay
December 18, 2013 at 11:30 PM
Erik Rubright
My father often said I had diarrhea of the mouth as a child. I bet he didn’t know of the word “logorrhea”.
December 22, 2013 at 5:37 AM
Allen
This is a useful dictionary, and even fun. I would probably find your party conversation fascinating.