Viscerotonia

Part of speech: noun

Definitions

1. A temperament type in William Sheldon's body-type psychology marked by love of comfort, sociability, relaxation and indulgence in food
2. The personality profile linked by Sheldon to a soft, rounded physique, characterized by easygoing, gregarious and pleasure-seeking traits
3. A relaxed, sociable and food-loving disposition that Sheldon associated with the endomorphic body type and its visceral development

Etymology: Viscerotonia is a term from psychology, coined by the American psychologist William Sheldon in the 1940s as part of his system for classifying human body types and temperaments. Sheldon paired each body build with a temperament, and viscerotonia described the relaxed, sociable, food-loving, comfort-seeking personality that went with a rounder, soft-bodied build. The word is built from "viscero-", from Latin "viscera", meaning the internal organs of the body, especially those in the abdomen and chest, and the suffix "-tonia", from Greek "tonos", meaning tension or tone. Sheldon's choice was deliberate: he linked the temperament to the digestive viscera, the organs he associated with the endomorphic physique, and the suffix pairs with his other coinages, such as cerebrotonia and somatotonia.