A.Word.A.Day -- bulimia

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bulimia

This week's theme: words with hidden animals.

bulimia (boo-LIM-ee-uh, byoo-) noun

1. Excessive or insatiable appetite.
2. An emotional disorder marked by bouts of overeating followed by purging, by means of self-induced vomiting, laxatives, etc.

[From New Latin bulimia, from Greek boulimia, from bous (ox) + limos (hunger).]

See more usage examples of bulimia in Vocabulary.com's dictionary.

Literally speaking, bulimia is ox hunger. It's not clear whether it means one could eat like a bull, or eat a whole bull. It's also known as boulimia, bulimia nervosa, bulimarexia, binge-purge syndrome.

It's a strange world where some eat and then throw it up, while there are millions who go to bed hungry, even in a rich nation like the USA.

"Eating disorders are also a daily subject for viewers of the prime-time soap opera 'The Pages of Our Lives,' in which a 15-year-old ballet dancer suffers from bulimia, secretly making herself vomit after eating to keep her weight down."
Brazil Transfixed by 4th Anorexia Death; Associated Press; Dec 27, 2006.

X-Bonus

This is my living faith, an active faith, a faith of verbs: to question, explore, experiment, experience, walk, run, dance, play, eat, love, learn, dare, taste, touch, smell, listen, argue, speak, write, read, draw, provoke, emote, scream, sin, repent, cry, kneel, pray, bow, rise, stand, look, laugh, cajole, create, confront, confound, walk back, walk forward, circle, hide, and seek. To seek: to embrace the questions, be wary of answers. -Terry Tempest Williams, naturalist and author (1955- )

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