Definition of "hysteria" []

• Behavior exhibiting excessive or uncontrollable emotion, such as fear or panic. (noun)
• A mental disorder characterized by emotional excitability and sometimes by amnesia or a physical deficit, such as paralysis, or a sensory deficit, without an organic cause. (noun)

American Heritage(R) Dictionary of the English Language, Fifth Edition. Copyright (c) 2011 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. All rights reserved.

• "His theories took hold in American psychiatry, and the term hysteria came to mean “emotionally charged situations … symbolic of underlying conflicts.”"
• "Hippocrates, the “father of medicine” whose healing oath is revered to this day, used the term hysteria to describe overwhelming fear, sometimes accompanied by unexplained physical symptoms or loss of self-control."
• "The word hysteria comes from the Greek word for uterus."