Anorexia

Part of speech: noun

Pronunciation: /ænəˈɹɛksi.ə/

Definitions

1. A serious eating disorder characterized by an intense fear of gaining weight and a distorted body image, leading to severe restriction of food intake
2. A mental illness marked by severe dietary limitation caused by pathological fear of becoming overweight and abnormal body image awareness
3. A medical condition involving self-imposed starvation due to fear of weight gain and distorted perception of body shape

Etymology: Ancient Greek speakers used "anorexia" in a plain, literal sense: an, "not," plus orexis, "yearning" or "appetite," from the verb oregō, "to stretch out toward, reach for." The word meant simply a lack of appetite, the absence of the desire to eat. Greek physicians used it that way, describing a loss of hunger as a symptom of illness. The term reached English as a learned borrowing from Greek, keeping its original sense of loss of appetite for centuries. Only much later did it come to name the psychological condition of deliberate, fear-driven starvation that we mean today. The modern medical meaning, with its focus on fear of weight gain and distorted body image, is a far more recent development than the Greek roots suggest. The word therefore carries a striking contrast within it: a grammatical "not" attached to a word for reaching toward something, describing the failure to reach for food, now applied to a condition in which a person's own perception of their body drives them to refuse it.

Synonyms: anorexia nervosa, eating disorder, loss of appetite

Antonyms: appetite, bulimia, overeating