neurosthenia
neurosthenia noun: strong reaction or overreaction of a nerve to a stimulus. Also the misconstruction of neurasthenia.
Noun
neurosthenia (uncountable)
- Strong reaction or overreaction of a nerve to a stimulus.
Also used as
neurosthenia is also the misconstruction of neurasthenia.
Origin of neurosthenia
From New Latin, from Ancient Greek νεῦρον (neûron) + Ancient Greek σθένος (sthénos). By surface analysis, neuro- (“nerve”) + sthen- (“strength”) + -ia (“disease”).
From mistaken rebracketing of neurasthenia (whose valid surface analysis is neur- + asthenia) as if it were prefixed with neuro-, by false analogy with most other ISV compounds beginning with the syllable neur- + /ə/ (which are thus prefixed). The error is not rare, but it invites proscription because the -a- syllable in neurasthenia corresponds to the negation of strength, that is, to weakness (of constitution or affect); by surface analysis, it is equivalent to a- ("without"/"opposite"), the difference between strength and weakness.
Questions about neurosthenia
- What does neurosthenia mean?
- Neurosthenia means strong reaction or overreaction of a nerve to a stimulus.
- What part of speech is neurosthenia?
- Neurosthenia is a noun.
Words near neurosthenia in the dictionary
Source and license
Adapted from Wiktionary: neurosthenia (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:
Cite this entry: “neurosthenia.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/neurosthenia. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.
