neurosis

noun

neu·​ro·​sis nu̇-ˈrō-səs 

nyu̇-

plural neuroses nu̇-ˈrō-ˌsēz 

nyu̇-

: a mental and emotional disorder that affects only part of the personality, is accompanied by a less distorted perception of reality than in a psychosis, does not result in disturbance of the use of language, and is accompanied by various physical, physiological, and mental disturbances (such as visceral symptoms, anxieties, or phobias)

Example Sentences

LBJ by legend watched the evening news about Vietnam simultaneously on three TVs, a ticket to a neurosis and night sweats. —Daniel Henninger, Wall Street Journal, 2 Dec. 2005

He's self-conscious about few things, period, and so utterly lacking in neurosis that it's unnerving, frankly. —Ned Zeman, Vanity Fair, February 2001

None of this official intervention did much to calm the fretfulness about maidservants, for the anxiety about their being both unreliable yet indispensable marked the birth of an authentically bourgeois neurosis. —Simon Schama, The Embarrassment of Riches, 1988

Recent Examples on the Web

Their saccharine tone seemed to cover up a latent anxiety about the complications of belonging, a cultural neurosis barely repressed. —Jasmine Liu, The New Republic, 21 Mar. 2023

His retiring, anxious energy smartly updates the diffident English romantic persona cultivated by the likes of Hugh Grant and Colin Firth — but with a timely hint of Gen-Z neurosis in the mix. —Guy Lodge, Variety, 16 Mar. 2023

Irma Vep gives us is less a tabloid fan-fic guessing game, however, than its creator’s own neurosis and fears about where he’s been, where the art form he’s obsessed over is going and what happens to cinephiles if cinema reaches its last-gasp phase. —David Fear, Rolling Stone, 20 June 2022

Like Holofcener’s other intimate portraits of love and neurosis, the film sees Louis-Dreyfus as a middling writer struggling to get her new novel off the ground. —Matt Donnelly, Variety, 19 Jan. 2023

Since Freud first cast religion as a collective neurosis in the early 1900s, religion and psychology have historically eyed each other with suspicion, if not outright antagonism. —Deborah Netburnstaff Writer, Los Angeles Times, 9 Jan. 2023

Charlotte Eliot, 77 years old, resident of Greater Boston, popped over to see her son in London, stayed for 10 weeks, and left him prostrate with neurosis. —James Parker, The Atlantic, 8 Dec. 2022

The study elegantly showed that for pain, placebo effects were not some neurosis but the brain medicating itself. —Erik Vance, Discover Magazine, 19 July 2014

The irony is that Tobis, in comparing the outright denial of climate change to a neurosis, remains blind to the obvious behavioral aspect of the larger problem-- public apathy. —Keith Kloor, Discover Magazine, 29 Mar. 2010

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Word History

Etymology

borrowed from New Latin neurōsis "any of various conditions (as coma or paralysis) involving impairment of the sensory and motor systems without local disease or fever," from Greek neûron "sinew, tendon, nerve" + New Latin -ōsis -osis — more at nerve entry 1

Note: The Latin term neurosis was introduced in the sense given in the etymology ("sensus et motus laesi, sine pyrexia et sine morbo locali") by the Scottish physician William Cullen (1710-90) in Synopsis nosologiæ methodicæ (Edinburgh, 1769), p. 274. Cullen later used the word in English: "In this place I propose to comprehend, under the title of Neuroses, all those preternatural affections of sense or motion, which are without pyrexia as part of the primary disease; and all those which do not depend upon a topical affection of the organs, but upon a more general affection of the nervous system, and of those powers on which sense and motion more especially depend." (First Lines of the Practice of Physic, for the Use of the Students in the University of Edinburgh, vol. 3 [Edinburgh, 1783], p. 2).

First Known Use

circa 1784, in the meaning defined above

Phrases Containing neurosis

• anxiety neurosis

• anxiety neurosis

Kids Definition

neurosis

noun

neu·​ro·​sis n(y)u̇-ˈrō-səs 

plural neuroses -ˈrō-ˌsēz 

: any of various mental and emotional disorders that affect only part of a person's personality, are less serious than a psychosis, and involve unusual or extreme reactions (as abnormal fears, depression, or anxiety) to stress and conflict

Medical Definition

neurosis

noun

neu·​ro·​sis n(y)u̇-ˈrō-səs 

plural neuroses -ˌsēz 

: a mental and emotional disorder that affects only part of the personality, is accompanied by a less distorted perception of reality than in a psychosis, does not result in disturbance of the use of language, and is accompanied by various physical, physiological, and mental disturbances (as visceral symptoms, anxieties, or phobias)