Psychosomatic

Part of speech: adjective

Pronunciation: /ˌsaɪkəʊsəˈmætɪk/

Definitions

1. Referring to the phenomena where psychological states lead to physical symptoms in the body
2. Pertaining to health issues that arise from or are exacerbated by mental conditions and emotional stress
3. Connected to bodily symptoms that originate from emotional or mental processes rather than physical illness

Etymology: The word is a modern compound, and its two halves come from ancient Greek but were never joined in Greek itself. "Psycho-" descends from "psūkhē", meaning breath, life or soul, and "somatic" comes from "sōma", meaning body. English put them together as a deliberate pairing to name illnesses where the mind visibly shapes the body, something the classical Greeks had no single word for. The "-ic" ending comes from the Greek adjectival suffix "-ikos", which turns "sōma" into "sōmatikos", meaning "of the body" or "bodily". English took that adjective as "somatic" and then placed "psycho-" in front of it, so the word reads literally as "mind-body" or "soul-bodily". The construction follows the same pattern as other scientific compounds of its era, where Greek roots were recombined to name new concepts.

Synonyms: mind-body