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Dec 26, 2017
This week’s theme
No el

This week’s words
quartziferous
hypercathexis
bavardage
aciniform
crackjaw

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with Anu Garg

hypercathexis

PRONUNCIATION:
(hy-puhr-kuh-THEK-sis)

MEANING:
noun: Excessive concentration of mental energy on something.

ETYMOLOGY:
From Greek hyper- (over, above) + cathexis, from Greek kathexis (holding), from katekhein (to hold fast), from kata- (intensive prefix) + ekhein (to hold). Ultimately from the Indo-European root segh- (to hold), which is also the source of words such as hectic, scheme, scholar, cathect, and asseverate. Earliest documented use: 1923.

USAGE:
“She is especially drawn to a passage on the hypercathexis of lost objects.”
Marta Bladek; “A Place None of Us Know until We Reach It”: Mapping Grief and Memory in Joan Didion’s The Year of Magical Thinking; Biography (Honolulu, Hawaii); Fall 2014.

A THOUGHT FOR TODAY:
The force which makes for war does not derive its strength from the interested motives of evil men; it derives its strength from the disinterested motives of good men. -Norman Angell, lecturer, author, MP, and Nobel laureate (26 Dec 1872-1967)

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