Word.ws English Dictionary

tarantulism

tarantulism is the alternative form of tarantism.

Meaning of tarantism

Noun

tarantism (usually uncountable, plural tarantisms)

  1. (usually) An extreme urge to dance, popularly thought to have been caused by the bite of a tarantula (Lycosa tarantula) and prevalent in southern Italy in the 15th through 17th centuries.
    • This dancing mania or tarantism prevailed during the whole of the 17th century — and Baglivi, one of the best physicians of that time, made it the subject of a dissertation. He supports his history of the symptoms by the testimony of his father, […]1835, James Johnson, The Medico-chirurgical Review, page 53

Questions about tarantulism

What is tarantulism the alternative form of?
Tarantulism is the alternative form of tarantism.

Words near tarantulism in the dictionary

  1. tarantular
  2. tarantulas
  3. tarantulated
  4. tarantulid
  5. tarantulids
  6. tarantulism
  7. tarantuloid
  8. tarantulous
  9. tarapacaite
  10. Tarapacá
  11. tarapatch

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: tarantulism (page history and authors); tarantism (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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Cite this entry: “tarantulism.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/tarantulism. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.