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oral gratification

oral gratification noun: in Freudian psychology, the satisfaction felt in infancy when the need for food, especially from the mother's breast, is fulfilled, and which in later life can be associated with such dysfunctional behaviors as excessive eating, drinking, or smoking.

Noun

oral gratification (countable and uncountable, plural oral gratifications)

  1. In Freudian psychology, the satisfaction felt in infancy when the need for food, especially from the mother's breast, is fulfilled, and which in later life can be associated with such dysfunctional behaviors as excessive eating, drinking, or smoking.
    • Oral gratification was offered almost continuously—between-meal nourishment, before-bed treats, chewing gum and toys which could be sucked and chewed.1958, E. I. Falstein, H. A. Sutton, “Childhood Schizophrenia”, in The American Journal of Nursing, volume 58, number 5, page 669
    • These experiences left him with a rather unsteady control over his angry impulses, particularly when denied oral gratification such as a drink of liquor.1980, Waud Kracke, “The Complementarity of Social and Psychological Regularities: Leadership as a Mediating Phenomenon”, in Ethos, volume 8, number 4, page 281

Forms of oral gratification

pluraloral gratifications

Questions about oral gratification

What does oral gratification mean?
Oral gratification means in Freudian psychology, the satisfaction felt in infancy when the need for food, especially from the mother's breast, is fulfilled, and which in later life can be associated with such dysfunctional behaviors as excessive eating, drinking, or smoking.
What part of speech is oral gratification?
Oral gratification is a noun.
What is the plural of oral gratification?
The plural of oral gratification is oral gratifications.

Words near oral gratification in the dictionary

  1. oral dams
  2. oral exam
  3. oral examination
  4. oral exams
  5. oral glucose
  6. oral gratification
  7. oral gratifications
  8. oral histories
  9. oral history
  10. oral hygiene
  11. oral law

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: oral gratification (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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