primary amenorrhea
- noun
- /ˈpraɪˌmɛri əˈmɛnəˌriə/
- Specialized
:
amenorrea primaria
- Many girls experience anxiety about their body changes, especially those with primary amenorrhea after reaching adolescence.
Examples
-
Absence of the onset of menses by age 16 is defined as primary amenorrhea.
Academic text (2003) -
These patients present with primary amenorrhea typically in adolescence.
Academic text (2012) -
The doctor explained that primary amenorrhea is diagnosed when a girl has not begun her periods by age 18.
-
A detailed medical history is crucial for identifying the causes of primary amenorrhea in young women.
Synonyms
1
9.9
Lack of menstrual periods in a woman who can become pregnant
Antonyms
- Specialized
A woman who had regular periods but then does not have them anymore
Surface Forms
Morphology
If a learner knows 'amenorrhea' as cessation of menstruation and understands 'primary' in the medical sense as 'initial' or 'from the outset', they can compositionally infer that 'primary amenorrhea' refers to menstruation that has never begun. However, 'primary' can be ambiguous for non-medical learners (often known as 'main' or 'most important') and the precise clinical criterion (e.g. age threshold) is not derivable from the parts, so the relation is only partially transparent.
Etymology
Primary amenorrhea comes from two medical words: primary and amenorrhea. The word primary means 'first' or 'early' and amenorrhea means 'no monthly bleeding', so the term describes when a girl or young woman has not started her period by the expected age, often age 18.