"mothersickness" - Word of the Day from the OED

OED Online Word of the Day

OED Online will relaunch in December 2010. Find out more...

Now Available: How to Read a Word

Noted lexicographer Elizabeth Knowles provides a 'how-to' guide for budding word detectives, showing how to explore the history of words from origin to current usage, identifying both the questions you should ask and how to answer them. Click here for more details.

'An indispensable field guide for all word origin hunters, full of insider's tips and practical advice' John Mitchinson, co-author of QI: The Book of General Ignorance

Now available: the Historical Thesaurus of the Oxford English Dictionary

This new print publication provides a unique resource for scholars researching linguistic and literary history, the history of the language, social history, and more. Read more and see a sample page.

"An indispensable tool for writers." –School Library Journal.

---

mothersickness, n.

DRAFT ENTRY June 2010

Brit. /mskns/, U.S. /mrskns/  [< MOTHER n.¹ + SICKNESS n., after MOTHERSICK adj. In sense 2 after French mal de mère (1818 in work cited in quot. 1993¹ at sense 2).] 

    1. The state or condition of pining for one's mother. Cf. MOTHERSICK adj. 2. Now rare.

1768 J. BENTHAM Let. 30 Aug. (1968) I. 133 Qualms of friend-sickness (a Name for a disorder not taken notice of in the Dispensatory but which I formed by analogy from Mother-sickness). 1893 C. M. YONGE Treasure in Marshes xiv. 112 A deadly fit of longing and mother-sickness which made him think seriously of..coming home.

    2. Hysteria. Cf. MOTHERSICK adj. 1. nonce-use.

1993 J. BEIZER in S. Nash Home & its Dislocations 265 Among the synonyms given for hysteria by..the Dictionnaire des Sciences Medicales, we find ‘mal de mère’, a term I will first literally translate as ‘mothersickness’. 1993 J. BEIZER in S. Nash Home & its Dislocations 266 Nineteenth-century mothersickness, avatar of the ancient wandering womb syndrome, may be defined, like seasickness, as a (metaphorical) variety of motion sickness.

To cancel this service, send a message to wotd@oed.com consisting of the text signoff oedwotd-l and leave the subject line blank . Alternatively, use this unsubscribe mail link.

Written requests to unsubscribe may be sent to:

Online Products
Oxford University Press
Great Clarendon Street
Oxford OX2 6DP
UK

Visit the OED's home page at www.oed.com

Copyright © Oxford University Press 2008

Oxford University Press (UK) Disclaimer

This message is confidential. You should not copy it or disclose its contents to anyone. You may use and apply the information for the intended purpose only. OUP does not accept legal responsibility for the contents of this message. Any views or opinions presented are those of the author only and not of OUP. If this email has come to you in error, please delete it, along with any attachments. Please note that OUP may intercept incoming and outgoing email communications.