neurotic

¹neu·rot·ic

adj \nu̇-ˈrä-tik\

Definition of NEUROTIC

: of, relating to, constituting, or affected with neurosis(see neurosis)

— neu·rot·i·cal·ly \-ti-k(ə-)lē\ adverb

Examples of NEUROTIC

1. The psychiatrist diagnosed the patient as neurotic.
2. My neurotic mother scolded me for staying out 10 minutes past curfew.
3. He is neurotic about his job.
4. This most fastidious of pianists sounds anything but neurotic when he plays Mozart. —Richard Coles, Times Literary Supplement, 15 Nov. 2002
5. Maybe it's because novelists don't talk much about each other. Maybe this is because novelists secrete a certain BO which only other novelists detect, like certain buzzards who emit a repellent pheromone detectable only by other buzzards, which is to say that only a novelist can know how neurotic, devious, underhanded a novelist can be. —Walker Percy, “An Interview With Zoltán Abádi-Nagy,” 1987 in Signposts in a Strange Land, 1991
6. In our own time, the most perfect examples of such biography … are the matchless case-histories of Freud. Freud here shows, with absolute clarity, that the on-going nature of neurotic illness and its treatment cannot be displayed except by biography. —Oliver Sacks, Awakenings. (1973) 1990

First Known Use of NEUROTIC

1866

Other Psychology Terms

fetish, hypochondria, intelligence, mania, narcissism, neurosis, pathological, psychosis, schadenfreude, subliminal

Rhymes with NEUROTIC

aquatic, biotic, chaotic, cirrhotic, demotic, despotic, ergotic, erotic, exotic, hypnotic, kyphotic, leprotic, lordotic, meiotic, mitotic, narcotic, necrotic, Nilotic, osmotic, psychotic, quixotic, robotic, sclerotic, thrombotic, zygotic