Word.ws English Dictionary

collectionitis

collectionitis noun: an obsessive desire to collect things; collectomania.

Noun

collectionitis (uncountable)

  1. An obsessive desire to collect things; collectomania.
    • His answer was one which, with appropriate variations, might have been given by any one of those who, like himself, have been willing sufferers from some form of collectionitis.1944, Douglas & Elizabeth Rigby, Lock, Stock and Barrel, page 317
    • Collectionitis strikes in the most unexpected quarters: it has metamorphosed a butcher into an expert on ancient porcelain and a cab driver into an Orientalist.1960, Harper's Magazine, volume 220

Origin of collectionitis

From collection + -itis. Compare French collectionnite.

Questions about collectionitis

What does collectionitis mean?
Collectionitis means an obsessive desire to collect things; collectomania.
What part of speech is collectionitis?
Collectionitis is a noun.

Words near collectionitis in the dictionary

  1. collection-plates
  2. collectional
  3. collectionally
  4. collectioner
  5. collectioners
  6. collectionitis
  7. collections
  8. collective
  9. collective action
  10. collective agreement
  11. collective agreements

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: collectionitis (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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Pronunciation audio from Wikimedia Commons, each file under its own free license: LL-Q1860 (eng)-Flame, not lame-collectionitis.wav.

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