Mania

Mania

Noun · /ˈmeɪ.ni.ə/

Definition

Mental illness marked by periods of great excitement or euphoria, delusions, and overactivity; an obsessive enthusiasm or preoccupation; an extreme craze or passion for something; (in compound words) an abnormal enthusiasm for something specified: Beatlemania, tulipomania, kleptomania.

Origin

From Latin mania, from Greek mania (madness, frenzy), from mainesthai (to be mad), from Proto-Indo-European *men- (to think). The Greek mania was used both for the divine madness of poetic inspiration — as in Plato's Ion — and for pathological mental illness. The clinical psychiatric sense was formalised in the 19th century. The compound-forming use — as a suffix meaning obsessive enthusiasm — is a productive element in English.