Definitions
from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 5th Edition.
- noun A painfully urgent but ineffectual attempt to urinate or defecate.
from The Century Dictionary.
- noun In medicine, a continual inclination to void the contents of the bowels or bladder, accompanied by straining, but with little or no discharge.
from the GNU version of the Collaborative International Dictionary of English.
- noun (Med.) An urgent and distressing sensation, as if a discharge from the intestines must take place, although none can be effected; -- always referred to the lower extremity of the rectum.
- noun a similar sensation as to the evacuation of urine, referred to the region of the bladder.
from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License.
- noun The
painful and oftenineffectual straining to relieve thebowels - noun a
painfully urgent need tourinate ordefecate that results in little beingpassed
from WordNet 3.0 Copyright 2006 by Princeton University. All rights reserved.
- noun painful spasm of the anal sphincter along with an urgent desire to defecate without the significant production of feces; associated with irritable bowel syndrome
Etymologies
from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 4th Edition
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Examples
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In the first place, tenesmus, accompanied with pain, attacked many, but more especially children, and all who had not attained to puberty; and the most of these died.
Of The Epidemics 2007
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Herophon was seized with an acute fever; alvine discharges at first were scanty, and attended with tenesmus; but afterwards they were passed of a thin, bilious character, and frequent; there was no sleep; urine black, and thin.
Of The Epidemics 2007
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The diseases which attacked them were in the form of dysenteries, tenesmus, lientery, and fluxes; but, in some cases, there were dropsies, with or without these complaints.
Of The Epidemics 2007
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Samuel may not have noted tenesmus because there was nothing to report.
A Furnace Afloat JOE JACKSON 2003
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In some men, this brought vomiting, but the most common reactions were waves of painful peristalsis in the gut, accompanied by tenesmus, a desire, but inability, to use the bathroom.
A Furnace Afloat JOE JACKSON 2003
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This is followed almost immediately by various symptoms; more rapid breathing, lowered arterial pressure, faster heart-beat, vomiting, blood diarrhoea and rectal tenesmus.
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"Severe vomiting, diarrhoea, rectal tenesmus: unable to keep standing, she urinates under herself; the pupils are dilated, the eyes haggard; complete mind-blindness, near-total failure of reflexes, deep unconsciousness, breathing dyspneic, heart-beat faint and very fast, pulse barely perceptible; dead in thirty-six hours."
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Purging not always present, but tenesmus and strangury.
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Acrid, metallic taste, constriction and burning in throat and stomach, nausea, vomiting of stringy mucus tinged with blood, tenesmus, purging.
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_ -- Burning pain and constriction in throat and gullet, pain and tenderness of stomach and bowels, intense thirst, nausea, vomiting, purging and tenesmus, with bloody stools, dysuria, cold skin, and feeble and irregular pulse.
chained_bear commented on the word tenesmus
"In any case it was almost time for his evening rounds: they amounted to a couple of obstinate gleets and a tenesmus..."
--P. O'Brian, The Hundred Days, 160
And a fine candidate for reesetee's "Worse Than They Sound" list.
March 25, 2008
reesetee commented on the word tenesmus
Eesh. Added.
March 25, 2008
charlieh7 commented on the word tenesmus
A word everyone's probably experienced but didn't know that it had a proper name.
May 24, 2014