Angoisse.
General feeling of anxiety or anguish at state of world.
An acute but unspecific feeling of anxiety; usually reserved for philosophical anxiety about the world or about personal freedom.
(German “anxiety”) Emotional state of anxiety without a specific cause. In existentialism, the term refers to general human anxiety at having free will, that is, of being responsible for one’s actions.
ETYM Latin anxietas, from anxius: cf. French anxiété. Related to Anxious.
1. A vague unpleasant emotion that is experienced in anticipation of some (usually ill-defined) misfortune; SYN. anxiousness, stress, fear, nervousness.
2. A relatively permanent state of nervous fear occurring in a variety of mental disorders; SYN. anxiousness.
Unpleasant, distressing emotion usually to be distinguished from fear. Fear is aroused by the perception of actual or threatened danger; anxiety arises when the danger is imagined or cannot be identified or clearly perceived. It is a normal response in stressful situations, but is frequently experienced in many mental disorders.
Anxiety is experienced as a feeling of suspense, helplessness, or alternating hope and despair together with excessive alertness and characteristic bodily changes such as tightness in the throat, disturbances in breathing and heartbeat, sweating, and diarrhea.
In psychiatry, an anxiety state is a type of neurosis in which the anxiety either seems to arise for no reason or else is out of proportion to what may have caused it. “Phobic anxiety” refers to the irrational fear that characterizes phobia).
Sigmund Freud, the founder of psychoanalysis, identified two forms of anxiety: signal anxiety, which alerts the ego to impending threats that might unbalance it, and primary anxiety, which occurs when its equilibrium is upset, as for example in trauma or a nightmare. He maintained that anxiety was the result of unsatisfied libido and repression, and that the most primitive form of anxiety originated in the individual's birth experience.
1. A feeling of sympathy for someone or something.
2. An anxious feeling; SYN. care, fear.
3. Something or someone that causes anxiety; a source of unhappiness; SYN. worry, headache, vexation.
4. Something that interests one because it is important or affects one.
ETYM Latin praeoccupatio: cf. French préoccupation.
1. An idea that preoccupies the mind and holds the attention.
2. The mental state of being preoccupied by something; SYN. preoccupancy, absorption, engrossment.
A feeling of restless agitation.