grand mal
6
7.4
- noun
- /ɡrænd mɑl/
- Specialized
:
gran mal
- During her first communion mass, just as she was approaching the altar, she experienced her first grand mal seizure.
- grand mal seizure
Examples
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This is very important: When they regain consciousness, please try to be as calm as possible, especially if the person has never had a grand mal seizure before.
Blog text (12) -
The man was advised by his admitting physician that he had dislocated his shoulder during a grand mal seizure.
Blog text (17) -
I opened the door again and found him in a grand mal seizure.
Blog text (23) -
- She's prone to grand mals.
-
Two sessions were discontinued because she had a grand mal seizure.
Academic text (1997) -
She had graduated from special education classes at Hiram Johnson High School before she began to have grand mal seizures.
Blog text (22) -
In a severe, or grand mal, seizure... ... a person may lose consciousness for several minutes... ... and suffer involuntary contractions of all the muscles of the body.
-
An epileptic, he suffers from grand mal seizures, which strike him like bolts of lightning, and then one must be careful to get hold of his tongue so he doesn't bite it off or swallow it.
Fiction book (1999) -
I remember accompanying a close friend to an appointment with a neurologist some years ago; out of the blue, she had suffered a grand mal seizure, and now her neurologist was telling her that her CAT scans, her leg readouts, and her MRI results had come back, post-seizure, completely normal.
Academic text (1999) -
During the school assembly, a student suddenly had a grand mal seizure, causing alarm among classmates.
Synonyms
An intense seizure when a person loses consciousness and their whole body shakes strongly
A seizure that affects the whole brain and causes loss of consciousness and violent body shaking
Surface Forms
Morphology
grand + mal
Although 'grand' clearly signals 'large' and 'mal' (from French mal, meaning illness/bad) can suggest sickness, the phrase is a technical medical loanword whose exact sense — a severe epileptic seizure with loss of consciousness and convulsions — is not directly derivable from 'large' + 'ill'. A B1 learner who knows the constituents might infer a serious illness but would be unlikely to predict the specific seizure meaning without prior exposure or medical knowledge.
Etymology
Grand mal comes from the French words grand 'big' and mal 'bad' or 'sick', giving the literal picture of a 'big, serious illness'. It is used today for a large seizure when someone loses consciousness and has strong, uncontrolled body movements, so the name helps you remember how serious the attack is.