Catalepsy
noun ·Uncommon ·College level
Definitions
- 1 A severe bodily condition, described in psychiatric pathology, marked by sudden rigidity, fixation of posture, and loss of contact with environmental conditions.
""But they could not have been asleep!" cried Lord John. "Dash it all, Challenger, you don't mean to believe that those folk were asleep with their staring eyes and stiff limbs and that awful death grin on their faces!" "It can only have been the condition that is called catalepsy," said Challenger."
- 2 a trancelike state with loss of voluntary motion and failure to react to stimuli wordnet
Example
More examples""But they could not have been asleep!" cried Lord John. "Dash it all, Challenger, you don't mean to believe that those folk were asleep with their staring eyes and stiff limbs and that awful death grin on their faces!" "It can only have been the condition that is called catalepsy," said Challenger."
Etymology
From Ancient Greek κατάληψις (katálēpsis, “act of seizing”), from καταλαμβάνω (katalambánō, “to seize”), from κατά (katá, “against”) + λαμβάνω (lambánō, “to take”). By surface analysis, cata- + -lepsy.
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Data sourced from Wiktionary, WordNet, CMU, and other open linguistic databases. Updated March 2026.