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neurosthenia

neurosthenia noun: strong reaction or overreaction of a nerve to a stimulus. Also the misconstruction of neurasthenia.

Noun

neurosthenia (uncountable)

  1. (archaic) 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

  1. neurosteroidal
  2. neurosteroidogenesis
  3. neurosteroids
  4. neurosterol
  5. neurosterols
  6. neurosthenia
  7. neurostimulant
  8. neurostimulants
  9. neurostimulate
  10. neurostimulated
  11. neurostimulates

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.

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