Today's Broadcast

Topic: Hysteria & effete

Call us easily overwhelmed, but we found it hilarious that the term hysteria has its origin in the notion that that psychoneurosis—which is marked by emotional excitability and disturbances of the psychic, sensory, vasomotor, and visceral functions—was once believed to have been born out of some disturbance of the uterus, or hystera in Greek.

We can blame the Greeks both for the word hysteria and for the concept of hysteria being a problem peculiar to women, but our historical research does not stop with womb; today we look at an adjective also born of woman: effete.

Just as hysteria nowadays has the extended sense naming "behavior exhibiting overwhelming or unmanageable fear or emotional excess," so does effete have an extended sense meaning "effeminate, not manly in appearance or manner"; or "soft and delicate from or as if from a pampered existence."

What was the original meaning of effete? Back in the early 1600s, effete meant "no longer able to produce young or fruit"; "unfruitful." Why? Because that adjective is born of the Latin effetus meaning (roughly) "out of" plus "fruitful"; "pregnant"; "breeding." Someone or something effete was "exhausted of fertility." This exhaustion developed into the "worn-out" sense of effete which was then followed by the "degenerate" and "decadent" senses.

Questions or comments? Write us at wftw@aol.com Production and research support for Word for the Wise comes from Merriam-Webster, publisher of language reference books and Web sites including Merriam-Webster's Collegiate Dictionary, Eleventh Edition.