Definition of "tarantism" []

• A disorder characterized by an uncontrollable urge to dance, especially prevalent in southern Italy from the 15th to the 17th century and popularly attributed to the bite of a tarantula. (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.

• "These effects consisted of a feigned or imaginary disease known as tarantism, which was prevalent in Apulia and other portions of southern Italy during the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries."
• ""tarantism," which was supposed to originate in the bite of the tarantula."
• "One of the oldest documents on the subject of tarantism, Ferdinando Ponzetti's Sertum Papale De Venensis (1362), had suggested that the victims of shade-dwelling spiders were hostages to the music of the tarantula's bite, to its 'cantum tempore'."