Definitions
from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 5th Edition.
- noun A frenzy supposed by ancient peoples to have been induced by nymphs.
- noun An emotional frenzy.
from The Century Dictionary.
- noun An ecstasy; a divine frenzy.
from the GNU version of the Collaborative International Dictionary of English.
- noun rare A species of demoniac enthusiasm or possession coming upon one who had accidentally looked upon a nymph; ecstasy.
from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License.
- noun A
frenzied state of (usually erotic) emotion, especially concerning something or someoneunattainable .
from WordNet 3.0 Copyright 2006 by Princeton University. All rights reserved.
- noun a frenzy of emotion; as for something unattainable
Etymologies
from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 4th Edition
from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License
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Examples
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A terrible malady is she, a malady the ancients knew of and called nympholepsy -- a beautiful name evocative and symbolic of its ideal aspect,
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The word we want is "nympholepsy", which doesn't quite mean what you think it means.
The Guardian World News Martin Amis 2009
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London, 1821, entitled _Two Pairs of Historical Portraits_, in which an attempt is made to trace a minute resemblance between the characters and careers of Rienzi and the First Napoleon.)] [494] {415} [The word "nympholepsy" may be paraphrased as "ecstatic vision."
The Works of Lord Byron. Vol. 2 George Gordon Byron Byron 1806
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Here he is, at last, an admitted pedophile—no longer “an artist and a madman, a creature of infinite melancholy,” who seeks to fancy up his crime by calling it nympholepsy instead.
Archive 2009-02-01 2009
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The seduction of Lolita exists in discrete moments that are sufficient in themselves to constitute the heaven and hell of nympholepsy.
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Here he is, at last, an admitted pedophile—no longer “an artist and a madman, a creature of infinite melancholy,” who seeks to fancy up his crime by calling it nympholepsy instead.
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It is this repetition—not the nympholepsy itself, but the endless recurrence of its self-imprisoning instants—that eventually dooms and destroys Humbert.
Archive 2009-10-01 2009
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The seduction of Lolita exists in discrete moments that are sufficient in themselves to constitute the heaven and hell of nympholepsy.
Archive 2009-10-01 2009
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It is this repetition—not the nympholepsy itself, but the endless recurrence of its self-imprisoning instants—that eventually dooms and destroys Humbert.
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How often have _we_ -- martyrs to a hopeless nympholepsy -- strayed through that piazza, at the self same hour -- there deemed that the heart would break -- but never thought that it might slowly wither.
A Love Story A Bushman
qms commented on the word nympholepsy
The folks in a mystical cult
Sip potions to help them exult.
The visions adepts see
Provoke nympholepsy,
Which is the desired result.
June 29, 2017