Word of the Day:
hebephrenia
What It Means
A form of schizophrenia characterized by inappropriate behavior and emotional responses.
A type of mental disorder occurring during puberty characterized by silly behavior and inappropriate laughter.
Hebephrenia in Context
“Sir: drinking is a problem without doubt: / Whether or not we like it, whether or not / The goddamn thing will put you on the spot / With heebiejeebies hebephrene or gout: / Or lumbago will set you tapping out / On brass ferrule to stool, to rest, to rot.”
Did You Know?
From Ancient Greek ἥβη (hḗbē, “youthful beauty”) (also Ἥβη (Hḗbē, “the goddess Hebe”)) + φρήν (phrḗn, “mind”).
Source and license
Adapted from Wiktionary: hebephrenia (page history and authors). Text available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 license. Word.ws chose the word and reformatted its meaning, examples and origin.
Cite this entry: “hebephrenia.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/hebephrenia. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.
