Word.ws English Dictionary

catalepsis

catalepsis is the dated form of catalepsy.

Meaning of catalepsy

Noun

catalepsy (plural catalepsies)

  1. A severe bodily condition, described in psychiatric pathology, marked by sudden rigidity, fixation of posture, and loss of contact with environmental conditions.
    • "But they could not have been asleep!" cried Lord John. "Dash it all, Challenger, you don't mean to believe that those folk were asleep with their staring eyes and stiff limbs and that awful death grin on their faces!" "It can only have been the condition that is called catalepsy," said Challenger.1913, Arthur Conan Doyle, “(please specify the page)”, in The Poison Belt […], London; New York, N.Y.: Hodder and Stoughton, →OCLC

Forms of catalepsis

pluralcatalepses

Questions about catalepsis

What is catalepsis the dated form of?
Catalepsis is the dated form of catalepsy.

Words near catalepsis in the dictionary

  1. catalecticant
  2. catalecticants
  3. catalectics
  4. catalepses
  5. catalepsies
  6. catalepsis
  7. catalepsy
  8. cataleptic
  9. cataleptical
  10. cataleptically
  11. cataleptics

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: catalepsis (page history and authors); catalepsy (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.

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