MANIA

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 Dictionary entry overview: What does mania mean? 

• MANIA (noun)
  The noun MANIA has 2 senses:

1. an irrational but irresistible motive for a belief or action

2. a mood disorder; an affective disorder in which the victim tends to respond excessively and sometimes violently

  Familiarity information: MANIA used as a noun is rare.

 Dictionary entry details 

• MANIA (noun)

Sense 1

Meaning:

An irrational but irresistible motive for a belief or action

Classified under:

Nouns denoting goals

Synonyms:

cacoethes; mania; passion

Hypernyms ("mania" is a kind of...):

irrational motive (a motivation that is inconsistent with reason or logic)

Hyponyms (each of the following is a kind of "mania"):

agromania (an intense desire to be alone or out in the open)

alcoholism; dipsomania; potomania (an intense persistent desire to drink alcoholic beverages to excess)

egomania (an intense and irresistible love for yourself and concern for your own needs)

kleptomania (an irresistible impulse to steal in the absence of any economic motive)

logomania; logorrhea (pathologically excessive (and often incoherent) talking)

monomania; possession (a mania restricted to one thing or idea)

necromania; necrophilia; necrophilism (an irresistible sexual attraction to dead bodies)

phaneromania (an irresistible desire to pick at superficial body parts (as in obsessive nail-biting))

pyromania (an uncontrollable desire to set fire to things)

trichotillomania (an irresistible urge to pull out your own hair)

Derivation:

manic (affected with or marked by frenzy or mania uncontrolled by reason)

Sense 2

Meaning:

A mood disorder; an affective disorder in which the victim tends to respond excessively and sometimes violently

Classified under:

Nouns denoting stable states of affairs

Synonyms:

mania; manic disorder

Hypernyms ("mania" is a kind of...):

affective disorder; emotional disorder; emotional disturbance; major affective disorder (any mental disorder not caused by detectable organic abnormalities of the brain and in which a major disturbance of emotions is predominant)

Hyponyms (each of the following is a kind of "mania"):

craze; delirium; frenzy; fury; hysteria (state of violent mental agitation)

Derivation:

manic (affected with or marked by frenzy or mania uncontrolled by reason)

 Context examples 

It looks like religious mania, and he will soon think that he himself is God.

(Dracula, by Bram Stoker)

Despite Brissenden's prejudice against the magazines, which was a pronounced mania with him, Martin decided that the great poem should see print.

(Martin Eden, by Jack London)

The up feeling is called mania.

(Bipolar Disorder, NIH: National Institute of Mental Health)

In contrast to mania, these symptoms do not cause significant impairment of the individual's productivity at work, or social and family relationships.

(Hypomania, NCI Thesaurus)

While the cooking mania lasted she went through Mrs. Cornelius's Receipt Book as if it were a mathematical exercise, working out the problems with patience and care.

(Little Women, by Louisa May Alcott)

For years I had gradually weaned him from that drug mania which had threatened once to check his remarkable career.

(The Return of Sherlock Holmes, by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle)

She could not even get her proper rest, for she was haunted by the fear that Hans would yield to his mania and kill Dennin while she slept.

(Love of Life and Other Stories, by Jack London)

He was wishing to get the better of his attachment to herself, she just recovering from her mania for Mr. Elton.

(Emma, by Jane Austen)

Violence of temper approaching to mania has been hereditary in the men of the family, and in my stepfather’s case it had, I believe, been intensified by his long residence in the tropics.

(The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes, by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle)

All he would say was:—The attendant thinks it is some sudden form of religious mania which has seized him.

(Dracula, by Bram Stoker)