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premorbid

premorbid

9.5
The state a person is in before they become ill
  • adjective
  • /priːˈmɔːrbɪd/
  • Specialized
translation icon : premorbido
  • The therapist gathered information about the patient's premorbid psychological state to better understand their current condition.
  • premorbid language
  • premorbid language proficiency
  • premorbid personality

Examples

  • Does premorbid language proficiency in each language influence post-stroke lexical semantic deficits in each language, and if so, to what extent?

    Academic text (2013)
  • Additionally, these women may have stronger coping mechanisms and good premorbid psychological adjustment that protect them from high levels of distress when diagnosed with breast cancer.

    Academic text (1994)
  • Few studies have examined the relationship between premorbid language use and postmorbid language performance in depth.

    Academic text (2013)
  • We predict that self-rating of premorbid language use can be used to determine post-stroke language presentation.

    Academic text (2013)
  • Consequently, premorbid proficiency is also discussed, as it is linked to the identification of impairment patterns.

    Academic text (2013)
  • For premorbid language use, the patient rated both L1 and L2 proficiency as "very good."

    Academic text (2013)
  • A review of the literature found that the outcome of brain injury may be influenced by factors such as cerebral representation of a secondary language, method of language acquisition, age of acquisition, premorbid language proficiency, and style of learning in individuals.

    Academic text (2012)
  • A fundamental difficulty in bilingual aphasia assessment is distinguishing the effects of aphasia from potential premorbid proficiency differences across languages.

    Academic text (2013)
  • Overall, the experiment results strongly suggest that an in-depth, premorbid language history is a vital piece to the evaluation and identification of deficits and language pattern impairments in bilingual aphasics.

    Academic text (2013)
  • Research shows that a patient's premorbid health can significantly influence their recovery after surgery.

Surface Forms

premorbid positive

Morphology

premorbid = morbid (semi-transparent) = pre + morbid

The prefix 'pre-' clearly means 'before', but many learners know 'morbid' mainly in the everyday sense 'gruesome' rather than the medical sense 'relating to disease'.

Etymology

The word premorbid comes from the parts pre- 'before' and morbid 'relating to illness', so it describes a person's state or functioning before a disease began.