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Hysterical   Listen
adjective
Hysterical, Hysteric  adj.  
1.
Of or pertaining to hysteria. "With no hysteric weakness or feverish excitement, they preserved their peace and patience."
2.
In a state of hysteria; affected, or troubled, with hysterics; uncontrollably emotional; convulsive, fitful.
3.
In a state of panic or behaving in a wild irrational manner, due to fear or emotional trauma.
4.
Resembling hysteria; as, hysterical laughter.






Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48








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"Hysterical" Quotes from Famous Books



... hysterical shriek. She doubled up over the table, almost dipping her face into the dish-pan, and went off into a hurricane ...
— 'Lizbeth of the Dale • Marian Keith

... esteemed by him for the conduct of public affairs, might be perilous in dealings with a vivid girl: nor a hint, that when facts continue undigested, it is because the sensations are as violent as hysterical females to block them from the understanding. His Robin Goodfellow instinct tried to be serviceable at a crux of his meditations, where Edith Averst's consumptive brothers waved faded hands at her chances of inheriting largely. ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith

... the hysterical call of the Hussar spirit, also sprang up, waving his hat and trembling and swaying with the emotion that racked his ...
— The Last Shot • Frederick Palmer

... shall say at once that David won the match with two lovely fours, the one over my head and the other to leg all along the ground. When I came back from fielding this last ball I found him embracing his bat, and to my sour congratulations he could at first reply only with hysterical sounds. But soon he was pelting home to his mother ...
— The Little White Bird - or Adventures In Kensington Gardens • J. M. Barrie

... sort of hysterical composure. He opened the chest. It was patently artificial. There were such details on the inside as would be imagined in a container needed to fit something snugly. At the edges of the opening there were fastenings like the teeth ...
— The Invaders • William Fitzgerald Jenkins

... dressing and getting her breakfast and reading motor ads in the morning paper at the same time, she was utterly electrified to hear a sudden sharp cry of anguish from little Mrs. Bride beneath—a cry accompanied by sounds caused by nothing in the world but a passionate and hysterical pounding of small but violent feet upon ...
— Eve to the Rescue • Ethel Hueston

... lighted our lanterns, and, with a last hysterical laugh, we followed him into the earth, through long, narrow, humid passage-ways, the temperature not unpleasant, other passage-ways branching off and suggesting the labyrinth which we knew extended for a great distance in every direction. We finally ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, October 1885 • Various

... strength was past now, and Mary sank into a chair and burst into a fit of hysterical sobbing. Madame Michaud caressed and soothed her as if she had ...
— A Girl of the Commune • George Alfred Henty

... joy, had gone from him in such a manner; of what Thady would do and say, when he found that the suspicions, which she knew he already entertained, were too true. She could not bring her heart to give up Ussher; but the struggles within her breast at length made her hysterical, and Ussher was greatly frightened lest he should have to call in assistance to bring her to herself. She did not, however, lose her senses, and after a time she became more tranquil, and was able to listen to his plans. She first of all told him that she had promised Mrs. McKeon to ...
— The Macdermots of Ballycloran • Anthony Trollope

... to my Garret, and driven back by the guardian spirits of four huge flower-holders of omnigenous roses and honeysuckles—(Lord have mercy on his hysterical olfactories! What will he do in Paradise? I must have a pair or two of nostril-plugs, or nose-goggles laid in his coffin)—stands at the door, reading that to M'Adam, and the washer-woman's letter, and he admits the facts. You are found in ...
— The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb (Vol. 6) - Letters 1821-1842 • Charles and Mary Lamb

... faltered, "to get money from Mr. Deane to send you a cable, to catch a steamer to come back to America. I have got it!" she cried suddenly, her voice rising almost to a hysterical shriek. "I have got ...
— The Governors • E. Phillips Oppenheim

... Harriet got up and walked over to her companions. She walked rather unsteadily, but they were too much upset themselves to observe it. Tommy lay on a blanket with face buried in her arms, sobbing, every fourth sob being a hysterical moan. Harriet sat down beside the unhappy little girl, slipping an ...
— The Meadow-Brook Girls in the Hills - The Missing Pilot of the White Mountains • Janet Aldridge

... perish." It was the foreshadowing of such utterances as these, and the constant wanderings to and fro for readings and theatricals and what not, that led Harriet Martineau, who had known and greatly liked Dickens, to say after perusing the second volume of his life, "I am much struck by his hysterical restlessness. It must have been terribly wearing to his wife." On the other hand, there can be no manner of doubt that his wife wore him. "Why is it," he had said to Forster in one of the letters from which I have just quoted, "that, as with poor ...
— Life of Charles Dickens • Frank Marzials

... Company did not behave at all too well when their own captain, Middleton, resigned to conduct the first one on the Furnace Bomb and the Discovery to the Bay. Perhaps wrong signals in the harbours did lead the searchers' ships to bad anchorage. At any rate Arthur Dobbs announced in hysterical fury that the Company had bribed Middleton with L5000 not to find the Passage. Middleton had come back in 1742 saying bluntly, in sailor fashion, that 'there was no passage and never would be.' At once the Dobbs faction went into a frenzy. ...
— The "Adventurers of England" on Hudson Bay - A Chronicle of the Fur Trade in the North (Volume 18 of the Chronicles of Canada) • Agnes C. (Agnes Christina) Laut

... with all the disgrace and suffering that attach to such hysterical paroxysms, or at least a defeat, are the experiences through which half-organized bodies often pass to teach them the meaning of discipline and mechanical habit. An army must go through the annealing process like glass; ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 8, No. 48, October, 1861 • Various

... pamphlets, and special articles upon this subject, written by Northerners, Southerners, negroes, and even foreigners, is enormous. These publications range from displays of hysterical emotionalism to statistical studies, but no one book can treat fully all phases of so complex a question. Bibliographies have been prepared by W.E.B. Du Bois, A.P.C. Griffin, and others. W.L. Fleming has appended a useful list of titles to Reconstruction of the ...
— The New South - A Chronicle Of Social And Industrial Evolution • Holland Thompson

... a woman's hysterical laugh—and a deep-mouthed bellow rent the expectant air: shouts, screams, hat-tossings, back-clappings blending in a din that made the many-winding waters of the Silver Lea quiver ...
— Bob, Son of Battle • Alfred Ollivant

... Pythagoras; and out of the grave comes the sombre answer, /Great darkness/.[38] It is in this feeling that the brooding over death in later Greek literature issues; under the Roman empire we feel that we have left the ancient world and are on the brink of the Middle Ages with their half hysterical feeling about death, the piteous and ineffectual revolt against it, and the malign fascination with which it preys on men's minds and paralyses their action. To the sombre imagination of an exhausted race the generations of mankind ...
— Select Epigrams from the Greek Anthology • J. W. Mackail

... leaves we dropped them in the ballot shell. Whinney was teller. It was an anxious moment until he looked up and said with a hysterical ...
— The Cruise of the Kawa • Walter E. Traprock

... gone. No one has seen him. He is not in his room. Oh, yes, he is gone, he is gone!" She fell back against the wall with shriek after shriek of laughter, while I, horrified at this sudden hysterical attack, rushed to the bell to summon help. The girl was taken to her room, still screaming and sobbing, while I made inquiries about Brunton. There was no doubt about it that he had disappeared. His bed ...
— Memoirs of Sherlock Holmes • Sir Arthur Conan Doyle

... full of tender little touches telling of the hysterical upsetting in the mother's heart at the safe return of her boy from the perils ...
— Carette of Sark • John Oxenham

... objection is answered by the theory that individual sacrifice is unavailing: indeed, it is as useless as giving charity, quite. A case of intense suffering is brought under the notice of a bourgeois; it awakens in him a certain hysterical pity, or, I should say, remorse, for he feels that a system that permits such things to be cannot be wholly right. He relieves this suffering, and then he thinks he is a virtuous man; he thinks he has done a good action; but a moment's reflection shows us that ...
— Celibates • George Moore

... hysterical even yet, but at last her terror of a postponed wedding overcame every other consideration. The day was set for the 4th, and the few ...
— Good Cheer Stories Every Child Should Know • Various

... wife, and yet—this very fact that she is not an insignificant personality, is what I object to! I doubt her developing into either a blinded saint or a coquette with amiable complacence for others. We should lead a peppery life, I fear. But don't you think, my brother, that we are a bit hysterical over our family's extermination? After all, I am only twenty-eight; and in my opinion thirty-five is a suitable age for a man to marry. How old are you, Sandro—thirty-seven, is it not? And Leonora is nearly three years less. Of a truth, you ...
— The Title Market • Emily Post

... gesticulating, occasionally slapping each other violently on the back or knee, shouting with laughter as one of them told of a summer experience that struck them as funny. They were both so glad to get back to college, so glad to see each other, that they were almost hysterical. And when they left Surrey 19 arm in arm on their way to the Nu Delta house "to see the brothers," their cup of bliss was full to the ...
— The Plastic Age • Percy Marks

... hat, but his wig, had suffered. He spent the evening with me, totally unconscious of the fact that his hair presented the singular spectacle of having been parted diagonally from the right temple to the left ear. When ladies called, my wife preferred to receive them. They were generally hysterical, and often in tears. I remember, one Sunday, to have been startled by what appeared to be the balloon from Hayes Valley drifting rapidly past my conservatory, closely followed by the Newfoundland dog. I rushed to the front ...
— Urban Sketches • Bret Harte

... Danbury could have said would so prove the inconsequence of his injuries. It relieved his strained nerves until, in reaction, he became almost hysterical. ...
— The Web of the Golden Spider • Frederick Orin Bartlett

... expected to witness a hysterical scene between Beard and the girl, he was doomed to disappointment. He had stage-managed Beard's release, and he also had arranged for the presence of Miss Burden and Ward. He had hoped to produce a happy climax, with Ward present as a conflicting factor, to be carried by jealousy into ...
— The Substitute Prisoner • Max Marcin

... that Eph was thinking how idiotic it was for six human beings to sit, in perfect health, waiting until the soiling of the air about them killed them all. It was a terrible thought; Eph's mirth was of the hysterical kind. ...
— The Submarine Boys on Duty - Life of a Diving Torpedo Boat • Victor G. Durham

... tears came both more unmistakeably. Lois felt a little hysterical. She finished dressing hurriedly, and heard as little as possible of Madge's ...
— Nobody • Susan Warner

... day that she had set for a letter to come arrived, and she grew feverish, almost hysterical while waiting for ...
— Virgie's Inheritance • Mrs. Georgie Sheldon

... England in the face of insult and persecution. They penetrated the American colonies; their doctrines reached even beyond their language and affected the entire European Continent. The revival of devotion may have been hysterical, yet a vast revival it assuredly was; it has been called by some critics the most important religious movement ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, v. 13 • Various

... the tears coursing over her cheeks and mingling with the dust of her flight; blighted hope, shame, fear, rage, all tearing her bosom in turn, till with a hysterical shriek she fell over the bars and into Rebecca's arms outstretched to receive her. The other Daughters wiped her eyes and supported her almost fainting form, while Thirza, thoroughly frightened, burst into sympathetic tears, ...
— New Chronicles of Rebecca • Kate Douglas Wiggin

... know what to do,' said Cynthia, taking down her hands from her tear-stained face, and appealing to Molly, and sobbing worse than ever; in fact, she became hysterical, and though she tried to speak coherently, ...
— Wives and Daughters • Elizabeth Cleghorn Gaskell

... is always sure that these ornamental little wives have no other consolation for themselves or any one else, but in the copious tears that swell up into their pretty eyes, they must sit down and sob to break their dear little hearts with every now and then a hysterical sentence from behind the dainty lawn handkerchief, saying "what will everyone think? What will Lady Featherly say? We wont be asked to any more 'at homes' now, and the ball at 'Rideau' is next week, oh dear—boo—hoo—hoo!" Of course the merciless ...
— Honor Edgeworth • Vera

... as usual upon such occasions, they differed strangely at the consultation. At last they divided into two parties; one sided with Garth, the other with Ratcliff.* Dr. Garth said, "This case seems to me to be plainly hysterical; the old woman is whimsical; it is a common thing for your old women to be so; I'll pawn my life, blisters, with the steel diet, will recover her." Others suggested strong purging and letting of blood, because she was plethoric. Some went so far as to say the old woman was mad, and nothing ...
— The History of John Bull • John Arbuthnot

... two o'clock the following morning; and then she came against her will in a litter borne by two tired guides, while two others walked beside her and held her hands; and she was protesting at every step that she positively could not and would not go another inch; and she was as hysterical as a treeful of chickadees; her hat was lost, and her glasses were gone, and her hair hung down her back, and altogether she was a ...
— Roughing it De Luxe • Irvin S. Cobb

... Democratic press and orators became hysterical, denouncing him as "vile," "wicked," "malicious," and "vicious." The Herald called him an "arch-agitator," more dangerous than Beecher, Garrison, or Theodore Parker. It was denied that any conflict existed except such as he was trying to foment. Even the New York ...
— A Political History of the State of New York, Volumes 1-3 • DeAlva Stanwood Alexander

... showing the small white teeth and forming the dimples in cheeks and chin. So great was the girl's relief; so appalled was she at what might have been, that the conflict of emotions made her almost hysterical. ...
— Joyce of the North Woods • Harriet T. Comstock

... Then his hysterical nature came out, and he was so near fainting away that Helen sprinkled water on his temples, and applied eau-de-cologne to his nostrils, and murmured, "Poor, poor Arthur! Oh, was I born only ...
— Foul Play • Charles Reade

... first night at the Lyceum in 1874 was not of that electrical, almost hysterical splendor which has greeted the momentous achievements of some actors. The first two acts were received with indifference. The people could not see how packed they were with superb acting—perhaps because the new Hamlet was so simple, so quiet, so free from the exhibition of actors' artifices which ...
— The Story of My Life - Recollections and Reflections • Ellen Terry

... The hysterical passion swelled in her bosom—her quickened convulsive breathing almost beat on my face, as she held me back ...
— The Moonstone • Wilkie Collins

... fifteen years after peace was declared that the Tsar sent a messenger to Siberia commanding Anna's immediate release and return, and also conferring upon her the time-honoured title of Podski. Anna was hysterical with joy, and filled herself a flask of vodka against the journey home. Poor Anna—she was destined never to ...
— Terribly Intimate Portraits • Noel Coward

... exegesis. As to the Song of Solomon, its influence upon Christian Mysticism has been simply deplorable. A graceful romance in honour of true love was distorted into a precedent and sanction for giving way to hysterical emotions, in which sexual imagery was freely used to symbolise the relation between the soul and its Lord. Such aberrations are as alien to sane Mysticism as they are ...
— Christian Mysticism • William Ralph Inge

... pent-up feelings found vent in a few hysterical tears from the Duchess, some bad language from Mother Shipton, and a Parthian volley of expletives from Uncle Billy. The philosophic Oakhurst alone remained silent. He listened calmly to Mother Shipton's desire to cut somebody's heart ...
— The Short-story • William Patterson Atkinson

... the supposed prophecy of the fourth Eclogue, they found and reverenced what seemed to them like an unconscious inspiration. The famous passage of St. Augustine, where he speaks of his own early love for Virgil, shows in its half-hysterical renunciation how great the charm of the Virgilian art had been, and still was, to him: Quid miserius misero, he cries, non miserante se ipsum, et flente Didonis mortem quae fiebat amando Aeneam, non flente autem mortem meam quae flebat non amando te? ...
— Latin Literature • J. W. Mackail

... authentically, it may even seem inadequate from first to last. Not so to me; I cannot count that a poor dinner, or a poor book, where I meet with those I love; and, above all, in this last volume, I find a singular charm of spirit. It breathes a pleasant and a tonic sadness, always brave, never hysterical. Upon the crowded, noisy life of this long tale, evening gradually falls; and the lights are extinguished, and the heroes pass away one by one. One by one they go, and not a regret embitters their departure; ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson, Volume 9 • Robert Louis Stevenson

... him, being in a nervous, hysterical state, she opened her mouth and shrieked sharply; the shriek at this time had more the tone of a child's anger than of a woman's fear. With a strong sense of humour he sat down at the table, and she, realising that ...
— A Dozen Ways Of Love • Lily Dougall

... snapped at her. And her ghastly attempt at a grin, with her swollen nose and red eyes, made me hysterical. I laughed and cried together, and pretty soon, like the two old fools we were, we were sitting together weeping into ...
— The Circular Staircase • Mary Roberts Rinehart

... something in Sarah's fluttering delight over the boy's appearance that morning which awoke an almost hysterical impulse in her brother. For he knew, as completely as though he had heard it from the boy's own lips, that nothing in the world but the knowledge that "Miss Sarah" wished it would have carried Steve through the ordeal of his first appearance. They had a word ...
— Then I'll Come Back to You • Larry Evans

... bend of the path on my way home, I suddenly came upon a young woman. First she looked at me in deadly fright, then, with a terrified cry, she jumped over the fence, and burst into hysterical laughter, while a dozen invisible women shrieked; then they all ran away, and as I went on, I could hear that the flight had ceased and the shrieks changed to hearty laughter. They had taken me for a kidnapper, or feared some other harm, as was natural enough with ...
— Two Years with the Natives in the Western Pacific • Felix Speiser

... own day, while magnetizing, have occasionally encountered not dissimilar phenomena. Dr. Bertrand tells us that the first patient he ever magnetized, being attacked by a disease of an hysterical character, became subject to convulsions of so long duration and so violent in character, that he had never, in all his practice, seen the like; and that she suffered horribly. He adds,—"Here is what happened during her first convulsion-fits. This unhappy ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 13, No. 77, March, 1864 • Various

... will give me letters and telegraph ahead to the train people," said Honor. "And you mustn't believe all the hysterical tales in the newspapers, ...
— Play the Game! • Ruth Comfort Mitchell

... do, it is your own concern. I only spoke for your sake. And Alda marched off, while Wilmet's strong tender arms helped Cherry into her own room, and tended her through one of those gusts, part repentant, part hysterical, which had belonged to her earlier girlhood, though the present was now enhanced by the tumult of insulted maidenliness. Formerly, Wilmet had not treated these attacks on the soft system, but now all her ...
— The Pillars of the House, V1 • Charlotte M. Yonge

... of immediate contact even with the wild hope of a miracle, from our conventional acceptance of the Christian miracles. If we would realise this we must look to modern alleged miracles—to the enthusiasm of the Irish and American revivals, when mind inflames mind till strong men burst into hysterical tears like children; we must look for it in the effect produced by the supposed Irvingite miracles on those who believed in them, or in the miracles that followed the Port Royal miracle of the holy thorn. There ...
— The Fair Haven • Samuel Butler

... Mr. Pitt's complaints were originally brought on by fasting too long and indeed only eating when he found it convenient, which ruined the tone of his stomach."[731] These statements explain the reason for the collapse of Pitt's strength late in the year. Hester's concluding remark is somewhat hysterical, but it is nearer the truth than the charge that Pitt was greedy of power. He killed himself by persistent overwork on behalf of a nation which did not understand him, and in the service of a Monarch who refused to allow him ...
— William Pitt and the Great War • John Holland Rose

... not my noble master," said Williams, observing the fixed posture and quenched eye of Evellin. At last he exclaimed—"I am not dead;" and bursting into an hysterical laugh, he swore De Vallance should find he ...
— The Loyalists, Vol. 1-3 - An Historical Novel • Jane West

... remorseful countenance, others seen in profile only, while many are whisperings at dusk. Most of them are called feminine, a term psychologically false. The poetic side of men of genius is feminine, and in Chopin the feminine note was over emphasized—at times it was almost hysterical—particularly in these nocturnes. ...
— Chopin: The Man and His Music • James Huneker

... that during the three years of this awful visitation one-third of the people of Europe perished. Whole cities were wiped out. In the despair and desolation of the period of scarcity that followed, humanity became hysterical, and within a generation that oddest of all the extravagances of the Middle Ages, the "dancing mania," rose to its height. Men and women wandered from town to town, especially in Germany, dancing frantically, until in their exhaustion they would beg the bystanders ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 07 • Various

... doesn't want to—should trouble Mrs. Ferguson any more than the thought of Mr. Cliff's removal troubles me. I'm perfectly willing to do what I can for the new cemetery, and nobody need think I'm such a nervous hysterical person that I'm in danger of popping over if the subject is mentioned to me. So when you all are ready to have another meeting, I hope ...
— Mrs. Cliff's Yacht • Frank R. Stockton

... till he saw the green shadows round the old man's lips that he knew just how cruel he had been. The quivering old mouth opened and closed and opened, the cold eyes gleamed. And the trembling hand in one nervous movement raised the cane and struck the other man sharply across the face. It was a hysterical blow, like a woman's, and with it the tears sprang ...
— The Incomplete Amorist • E. Nesbit

... this question is a very interesting one, but I have no space to enter into it here in detail. In my opinion—I say my own, I beg you to remark, only when I am uttering heresy—this mismanagement has been a by-product of the wave of hysterical emotionalism that has run through white culture and for which I have ...
— Travels in West Africa • Mary H. Kingsley

... whether much of the evidence given, especially by the Belgian witnesses, may not be due to excitement and overstrained emotions, and whether, apart from deliberate falsehood, persons who mean to speak the truth may not in a more or less hysterical condition have been imagining themselves to have seen the things which they say that they saw. Both the lawyers who took the depositions, and we when we came to examine them, fully recognized this possibility. The lawyers, as already observed, ...
— New York Times Current History; The European War, Vol 2, No. 3, June, 1915 - April-September, 1915 • Various

... the detective when they were safely out of hearing. "Fat and fifty, good-natured and violent by turns. One rather pretty girl, a housemaid from the white cap, frightened, been crying, inclined to be hysterical. Old Bates, the butler. Last, one gaunt, tall, vinegary, nondescript ...
— The Monk of Hambleton • Armstrong Livingston

... a short, mirthless bark. "Funny?" he said. "I'm absolutely hysterical with joy and good humor. I'm out of my mind with happiness." He paused. "Anyway," he finished, "I'm out of my mind. Which puts me in good company. The entire FBI, Brubitsch, Borbitsch, Garbitsch, Dr. Thomas O'Connor and Sir Lewis Carter—we're all out of our minds. ...
— Occasion for Disaster • Gordon Randall Garrett

... morsel, half a roll, at breakfast, she continued to toil; but the work was nearly done, and the dear girl's needle fairly flew. Of a sudden she dropped me in her lap and burst into a flood of tears. Her sobs were hysterical, and I felt afraid she would faint. A glass of water, however, restored her, and then this outpouring of an exhausted nature was suppressed. I was completed! At that instant, if not the richest, I was probably the neatest and most tasteful handkerchief ...
— Autobiography of a Pocket-Hankerchief • James Fenimore Cooper

... the severest code of morals, while others were distinguished by laxity. By some marriage was forbidden; others wanted all the marriage they could get and advocated polygamy. The religious meetings were similar to "revivals," frequently of the most hysterical sort. Claiming that they were mystically united to God, or had direct revelations from him, they rejected the ceremonies and sacraments of historic Christianity, and sometimes substituted for them practices ...
— The Age of the Reformation • Preserved Smith

... of his hysterical frenzy, and returned to a somewhat normal state of mind. He reasoned himself several times into the belief that those men were not in the least like the men he had seen Sunday. He knew that one could not recognize one's own brother at that distance and ...
— The Girl from Montana • Grace Livingston Hill

... that. You've not had enough sleep; your nerves have been over-strained. You're worn out and a little hysterical and morbid. Now lie down and keep quiet, and I'll bring you your supper. You need a good night's sleep and ...
— A Man's Woman • Frank Norris

... stone wall, however, in time to shake off the company of this inhospitable host. In the next field there were two or three skittish colts, which they scared into all manner of hysterical behavior as ...
— The Dozen from Lakerim • Rupert Hughes

... have drank of this drink, and have at once forgotten my cares, my poverty, my guilt. Old thoughts, old feelings, old faces, and old scenes have returned to me, and I have fancied myself happy,—as happy as I am now." And she burst into a wild hysterical laugh. ...
— Jack Sheppard - A Romance • William Harrison Ainsworth

... young couple returned to their native soil, they received a letter which caused Preston the greatest astonishment, and Mabel some hours of hysterical weeping. This letter was written by Judge Lawrence, and announced his marriage to Baroness Brown. Judge Lawrence had been a widower more than a year when the Baroness took the book of his heart, in which he supposed the hand of romance had long ago written "finis," ...
— An Ambitious Man • Ella Wheeler Wilcox

... the consciousness of her peril, this mental by-play urged her to the necessity of speed; and, like the stinger, her mind began an hysterical thrusting for a more subtle method ...
— Sunlight Patch • Credo Fitch Harris

... fair liar he had become. Not that the lad was a bad fellow at heart; but he had been chosen by the harpies at home, on account of his "peculiar vocation;" in plain English, because the wily priests had seen in him certain capacities of vague hysterical fear of the unseen (the religious sentiment, we call it now-a-days), and with them that tendency to be a rogue, which superstitious men always have. He was now a tall, handsome, light-complexioned man, with ...
— Westward Ho! • Charles Kingsley

... don't believe in it. My dear, your strong mind is all humbug, or you would not look so frightened," and again she was on the verge of hysterical laughing; "it is only that I can't stand a chorus of old ladies in commotion. How happy Alick must be to have his prediction verified by some one tumbling over a hoop!" Just then, however, seeing Mr. Carleton still lingering near, she caught hold of Rachel with a little cry, "Don't ...
— The Clever Woman of the Family • Charlotte M. Yonge

... this time discovered that it was a false alarm, and by degrees the hysterical feeling wore off, though there were many who would not soon forget the awful sense of fear that had almost ...
— The Boys of Columbia High on the Gridiron • Graham B. Forbes

... hysterical. Mr. Baxter's not like that. I do not see that he runs any greater risk ...
— The Necromancers • Robert Hugh Benson

... trouble. Ordinarily, at Paris, these squalls do not last long. The most vindictive enemies, trained to wars of the pen, know that silence is a sharper weapon than insult, and get more out of their animosity by keeping it quiet; but in the hysterical crisis in which Europe was struggling, there was no guide, even for hatred. Clerambault was continually being recalled to the public mind by the violent attacks of Bertin, though he never failed to conclude each one in which he had discharged his venom, with a disdainful: ...
— Clerambault - The Story Of An Independent Spirit During The War • Rolland, Romain

... from Germany. The patient could feel the accumulation of urine by burning pain in the epigastrium. Suddenly the pain would move to the soles of the feet, she would become nauseated, and large quantities of urine would soon be vomited. There was reported the case of an hysterical female who had convulsions and mania, alternating with anuria of a peculiar nature and lasting seven days. There was not a drop of urine passed during this time, but there were discharges through the mouth of alkaline waters ...
— Anomalies and Curiosities of Medicine • George M. Gould

... insane with hysterical emotion at sight of their work's fulfillment, were lost in the thunder of the ship. The blunt bow lifted where the sun made dazzling brilliance of her sweeping curves, and with a blast that thundered from her stern the first unit of the space forces of the ...
— Astounding Stories, February, 1931 • Various

... nickname, "Le petit Litz." It was with the utmost difficulty that his father had been able to keep him from making religion his career, and giving up his already glittering fame. Never in his life did he cease to thrill with an almost hysterical passion for churchly affairs ...
— The Love Affairs of Great Musicians, Volume 2 • Rupert Hughes

... enthusiasm, no cheering, nothing in the nature of hysterical exultation displayed by the crew of the Adventure, when the longboat ran alongside and those who had performed the audacious feat of rendering two powerful batteries innocuous rejoined their shipmates; everything was accepted as a matter ...
— Two Gallant Sons of Devon - A Tale of the Days of Queen Bess • Harry Collingwood

... "don't be angry, my dear fellow, but Maria is in a—hum—in a delicate situation, expecting her—hum"—(the eleventh)—"and do you know you frighten her? It was but yesterday you met her in the rookery—you were smoking that enormous German pipe—and when she came in she had an hysterical seizure, and Drench says that in her situation it's dangerous. And I say, George, if you go to town you'll find a couple of hundred at your banker's." And with this the poor fellow shook me by the hand, and called for ...
— The Fitz-Boodle Papers • William Makepeace Thackeray

... have proved more dangerous to the king, was on its discovery attended with more fatal consequences to themselves. Elizabeth Barton, of Aldington, in Kent, commonly called the "holy maid of Kent," had been subject to hysterical fits, which threw her body into unusual convulsions; and having produced an equal disorder in her mind, made her utter strange sayings, which, as she was scarcely conscious of them during the time, had soon after entirely escaped her memory. The ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.I., Part C. - From Henry VII. to Mary • David Hume

... able to pronounce that, barring exhaustion, the poor fellow was all right; upon which the anxious little crowd dispersed, Sibylla retiring to her state-room, locking herself in, and gaining relief to her overwrought feelings by abandoning herself to a perfect tempest of hysterical tears. ...
— The Missing Merchantman • Harry Collingwood

... of hysterical sobs and hurried toward the door. Elizabeth would have gone to her but she pushed her aside and rushed into the front hall and up the stairs. They heard her sobs ...
— Fair Harbor • Joseph Crosby Lincoln

... fit of hysterical weeping the woman drew back, endeavoring to close the cabin door. But Darrin's foot across the ...
— Dave Darrin After The Mine Layers • H. Irving Hancock

... lady, with an hysterical laugh; "Mr Sullivan, when I select a paramour, it shall be a handsome young man—not ...
— Newton Forster • Frederick Marryat

... employer continued, "unfortunately—or perhaps fortunately from our professional point of view—our lawmakers from time to time get rather hysterical and pass such a multiplicity of statutes that nobody knows whether he is ...
— By Advice of Counsel • Arthur Train

... Miss Nipper, Walter found that Florence, much refreshed by sleep, had dined and come to be on terms of perfect confidence and ease with old Sol. Miss Nipper caught her in her arms, and made a very hysterical meeting of it. Then, converting the parlor into a private tiring-room, she dressed her in proper clothes, and presently led her ...
— Ten Girls from Dickens • Kate Dickinson Sweetser

... many women imprisoned. One who had been shut up for more than a year was taken into custody because she had attempted rather informally to retake possession of a house of which she had been proprietor and out of which she had been fraudulently thrown. Her crime was a hysterical assertion of her rights and her ...
— The Story of the Philippines and Our New Possessions, • Murat Halstead

... and looting—unEnglish manifestations carried out in a very English way. Hysterical orators called for the destruction of all foreign refugees from the Grass, or at very least their exclusion from the benefits of the lootings. In every case the mob answered them in almost identical language: "Fair play," "Share and share alike," "Yer nyme Itler, ...
— Greener Than You Think • Ward Moore

... right to bear in mind the failing condition of Mrs. Browning's health. The strain of anxiety unquestionably overtaxed her strength, and probably told upon her mental tone in a way that may account for much that seems exaggerated, and at times even hysterical, in her expressions regarding those who did not share her views. Her errors were noble and arose from a passionate nobility of character, to which much might be forgiven, if there ...
— The Letters of Elizabeth Barrett Browning, Volume II • Elizabeth Barrett Browning

... Gaul has at all stages of his national history defied an attitude of indifference in others. His country has been at many times the head and at all times the heart of Europe. His hysteria has made Europe hysterical, while his sober national sense at critical moments has held the whole continent to good behaviour. For a half-dozen centuries there was never a squabble at any remote part of Europe in which France did not stand ready and willing to take a hand on the slightest opportunity. That policy, as pursued ...
— The Seigneurs of Old Canada: - A Chronicle of New-World Feudalism • William Bennett Munro

... reasonable—you are getting hysterical again. They have a maximum acceleration of five times the velocity of light. So have we, exactly, since we adopted their own drive. Now if our acceleration is the same as theirs, and they have a month's start, how long will it take ...
— Skylark Three • Edward Elmer Smith

... wonder, then, that the world thinks her extravagant in both directions at once; that the world turns away on Good Friday from the unutterable depths of her sorrow, and on Easter Day from the unscalable heights of her joy, calling the one morbid and the other hysterical? For what does the world know of such passions as these? What, after all, can the sensualist know of joy, or the ruined financier of sorrow? And what can the moderate, self-controlled, self-respecting man of the world know ...
— Paradoxes of Catholicism • Robert Hugh Benson

... religious enthusiasm to great extremes by everywhere urging upon excitable young men the duty to become preachers like himself. He had introduced a kind of intoning at public meetings. This tended to create nervous irritability and hysterical outbursts of religious emotionalism, and these, Davenport taught his disciples, were the signs of God's approval of them and their devotion to Him. The government, watching these tumultuous meetings, concluded that it was time to show its ancient authority and to save the people from ...
— The Development of Religious Liberty in Connecticut • M. Louise Greene, Ph. D.

... afterward, in her own room, thought, with a gale of hysterical laughter, "She just looked at me." And Anne couldn't find a word to crush the little termagant. Everything that seemed to pertain was either satirical, as to ask, "Did she tell you so?" or compassionate, implying cerebral decay. But she did venture ...
— The Prisoner • Alice Brown

... little shaken," answered Winnie, with a little laugh that was half hysterical. "I am strong ...
— Blown to Bits - The Lonely Man of Rakata, the Malay Archipelago • R.M. Ballantyne

... the front seat with Mrs. Harnden. By the time he had teamed the Squire's fat little nag along for a mile he had succeeded in calming Mrs. Harnden's hysterical spirits. He induced her to quit looking over her shoulder at the great torch that lighted luridly the heavens above the deserted town. "It's a pillar of fire by night, madam, as you say! But that's as far as it fits in with the Exodus ...
— When Egypt Went Broke • Holman Day

... in 1485 and came under the influence of the Madhva sect. In youth he was a prodigy of learning,[636] but at the age of about seventeen while on a pilgrimage to Gaya began to display that emotional and even hysterical religious feeling which marked all his teaching. He swooned at the mention of Krishna's name and passed his time in dancing and singing hymns. At twenty-five he became a Sannyasi, and at the request of his mother, who did not wish him to wander too far, settled ...
— Hinduism And Buddhism, Volume II. (of 3) - An Historical Sketch • Charles Eliot

... in the nature of a music-hall show, with frequent turns and changes, commenced. Popular favourites from every department of the theatrical world, each in turn claimed attention and applause. Katharine watched it all with an interest always strained, a gaiety somewhat hysterical; Jocelyn Thew with the measured pleasure of a critic; Richard with uproarious, if sometimes a little unreal merriment. The time slipped by apparently unnoticed. Suddenly Richard glanced at his wrist-watch and ...
— The Box with Broken Seals • E. Phillips Oppenheim

... bitter orange peel, the best of which comes from Curaao and Barbadoes. It is tonic and is used in decoction and in syrup. The infusion of the leaves, 5-10 grams to the liter, is useful as a sedative and diaphoretic in hysterical and nervous attacks; the infusion of the flowers is similarly used. When distilled the flowers yield a very sweet essential oil called neroli, which is used ...
— The Medicinal Plants of the Philippines • T. H. Pardo de Tavera

... sands of the garden with the soles of her little shoes. An hysterical sneer distorted ...
— Mare Nostrum (Our Sea) - A Novel • Vicente Blasco Ibanez

... As I grew more absolutely convinced of this truth, and began dimly to discern a strange world visible in a sallow light, like that of the London streets when a black fog hangs just over the houses, my hysterical chuckling gradually died away. Amusement at the poor follies of mortals was succeeded by an awful and anxious curiosity as to the state of immortality and the life after death. Already it was certain that "the Manes are somewhat," ...
— In the Wrong Paradise • Andrew Lang

... other matters, with which her residence in the family might have made her acquainted; but he found her by far too much troubled in mind to afford him the least information. The name of Ganlesse she did not seem to recollect—that of Alice rendered her hysterical—that of Bridgenorth, furious. She numbered up the various services she had rendered in the family—and denounced the plague of swartness to the linen—of leanness to the poultry—of dearth and dishonour ...
— Peveril of the Peak • Sir Walter Scott

... world heard the racket as a former Nobel prize-winner's stilted questions about the children were drowned out. This was not a planned invasion. It was a totally chaotic rushing-about of people who'd been half hysterical to start with, who had been crushed in a senselessly swaying mob, had been pushed bodily into a building-lobby jammed past endurance, and escaped into a maze from which they'd blundered into a studio with a broadcast going on. Stagehands and necktie-less persons rushed to throw them ...
— Long Ago, Far Away • William Fitzgerald Jenkins AKA Murray Leinster

... a hoarse trembling voice which it was difficult to recognise as Bainton's; "For the Lord's sake, don't make that noise, gel! Think o' Passon!—do'ee think o' Passon! We must break it to 'im gently like—-" But the hysterical sobbing broke out ...
— God's Good Man • Marie Corelli

... looms were at their noisy spider work; reels of gold thread were ordered in twenties; the bobbins began to dance around the maypole, sewing-machines sang lustily; the telephone only ceased ringing to deliver messages. Miss Rabbit became hysterical, vehement, cross; Gertie's intervention became necessary to prevent a strike amongst the ...
— Love at Paddington • W. Pett Ridge

... anyhow! I can't come out with such high-flying language about your Princess. The hysterical water-wagtail. What right has she to turn her nose up at marriage? Considering she knows nothing about it. Perhaps she might like it. You never ...
— Turandot, Princess of China - A Chinoiserie in Three Acts • Karl Gustav Vollmoeller



Words linked to "Hysterical" :   hysterical neurosis, hysteric, neurotic



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