What does "neurasthenia" mean?

An ill-defined medical condition characterized by lassitude, fatigue, headache, and irritability, associated chiefly with emotional disturbance.

What is a synonym for "neurasthenia"?

Common synonyms include: analgesia, anergasia, anesthesia, breakdown, collapse, crack up.

Pronounced //ˌnjʊəɹəsˈθiːniə//.

//ˌnjʊəɹəsˈθiːniə// noun

noun ·Rare ·Advanced level

Noun

1
An ill-defined medical condition characterized by lassitude, fatigue, headache, and irritability, associated chiefly with emotional disturbance. countable, dated, uncountable
2
nervous breakdown (not in technical use) wordnet

From neur- + asthenia, after Italian nevrastenia. By surface analysis, neur- (“nerve”) + a- (“not”) + sthen- (“strength”) + -ia (“disease”).

Data sourced from Wiktionary, WordNet, CMU, and other open linguistic databases. Updated March 2026.