alphabetitis
alphabetitis noun: mental weariness or lassitude brought about by an excessive exposure to letters, lettering, or acronyms.
Noun
alphabetitis (uncountable)
- Mental weariness or lassitude brought about by an excessive exposure to letters, lettering, or acronyms
- "You handle the alphabet like a veteran New Dealer" — To which I answered — "God forbid," He continued — "If the audience can survive that attack of 'alphabetitis' they can stand anything."1741, General Magazine and Historical Chronicle: Vol. XLIV Numb. I.
- A case of alphabetitis—or algebritis.1908, The New England Magazine - Volume 37
Examples of alphabetitis in a sentence
- Chemists, you see, are also affected with "alphabetitis."1944, The Rotarian - Vol. 64, No. 1:
- Yet I must not violate the sense of our Aphorism by pretending for even a moment that this puny seizure of alphabetitis is peculiar to our own time.1965, Robert K. Merton, On the Shoulders of Giants:
Origin of alphabetitis
From alphabet + -itis.
Questions about alphabetitis
- What does alphabetitis mean?
- Alphabetitis means mental weariness or lassitude brought about by an excessive exposure to letters, lettering, or acronyms.
- How do you use alphabetitis in a sentence?
- Chemists, you see, are also affected with "alphabetitis."
- What part of speech is alphabetitis?
- Alphabetitis is a noun.
Words near alphabetitis in the dictionary
Source and license
Adapted from Wiktionary: alphabetitis (page history and authors). Text available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 license. Word.ws reformatted the entry and added links. Wiktionary data of 2026-09-02.
Last updated:
Pronunciation audio from Wikimedia Commons, each file under its own free license: LL-Q1860 (eng)-Flame, not lame-alphabetitis.wav.
Cite this entry: “alphabetitis.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/alphabetitis. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.