Paruresis

//ˌpɑːjʊˈriːsɪs// noun

noun ·Rare ·Advanced level

Definitions

Noun
  1. 1
    The inability to urinate in the presence of others. uncountable

    "Completely normal men who develop prostatitis will suddenly come down with urinary paruresis as one of their symptoms."

Example

More examples

"Completely normal men who develop prostatitis will suddenly come down with urinary paruresis as one of their symptoms."

Etymology

From para- (“abnormal, defective”) + -uresis (“urination”). The term was coined by Williams and Degenhart in their 1954 paper "Paruresis: A survey of a disorder of micturition" in the Journal of General Psychology 51:19-29.

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