Tarantism Definition

tărən-tĭzəm
noun
A nervous disease characterized by hysteria and popularly believed to be curable by dancing or manifested by a mania for dancing: prevalent in S Italy during the 16th and 17th cent.
Webster's New World

Origin of Tarantism

  • New Latin tarantismus after Taranto

    From American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language, 5th Edition

Tarantism Sentence Examples

  • The name tarantella, in use at the present time, applies both to a dance still in vogue in Southern Italy and also to musical pieces resembling in their stimulating measures those that were necessary to rouse to activity the sufferer from tarantism in the middle ages.

  • In the town of Taranto victims of the tarantula danced a frenzied tarantella to prevent death from tarantism.

  • Like all spiders, the tarantula possesses poison glands in its jaws, but there is not a particle of trustworthy evidence that the secretion of these glands is more virulent than that of other spiders of the same size, and the medieval belief that the bite of the spider gave rise to tarantism has long been abandoned.

Find Similar Words

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Words Starting With

TTATAR

Words Ending With

MSMISM

Unscrambles

tarantism

Words Starting With T and Ending With M

Starts With T & Ends With MStarts With TA & Ends With MStarts With T & Ends With SM

Word Length

9 Letter Words9 Letter Words Starting With T9 Letter Words Ending With M
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