Definitions

from The Century Dictionary.

  • noun An inferior light-colored-kind of trepang.
  • noun A Japanese incense-burner or censer, usually of bronze, iron, or pottery.

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License.

  • noun psychology A delusional syndrome found in Malay and southern Chinese populations, characterized by a belief that the subject's penis will retract into the abdomen and cause death.

Etymologies

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License

Malaysian, Indonesian for "turtle."

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Examples

Comments

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  • Hopi - cave or niche

    February 12, 2007

  • Spontaneous disappearance of the (male) genitals through the malevolent magical agency of penis thieves or - more accurately - the delusion that this has occurred.

    June 12, 2008

  • Is this perhaps a bit like castratumdudgeon?

    June 12, 2008

  • "Forty-three years ago, a strange series of events unfolded on the island of Singapore. Hundreds of men rushed to the hospitals of the island with the terrifying belief that their penises were shrinking. Each feared that if his penis shrank away completely, he would die. Some came with lucky red strings tightly wrapped around their penises to prevent the lethal disappearance. Others had clamps holding their wayward organs in place. Most often it was a firm grasp of a hand, their own or a frightened family member's, that prevented the shrinking penis from slipping away and taking their life with it. Oddly enough, about a dozen women also fell victim to the panic. This was the Great Singapore Penis Panic, or what doctors refer to as an epidemic of the psychiatric condition called Koro. The Great Singapore Penis Panic and the Future of American Mass Hysteria explains the basis of koro in Chinese medicine, and how and why something so peculiar as the Singapore Koro epidemic could have happened when it did."

    - blurb, 'The Great Singapore Penis Panic, 17 Jan 2011.

    May 9, 2012