nervous prostration
- noun
- /ˈnɜrvəs ˌprɒstrˈeɪʃən/
- Archaic
:
prostración nerviosa
- Victorian doctors often diagnosed nervous prostration when patients suffered from unexplained fatigue.
Examples
-
He took a six-month leave to recover from nervous prostration brought on by personal loss.
-
After a period of intense pressure at work, she collapsed with nervous prostration.
-
She felt nervous prostration after the intense meeting.
-
After months of stress, she suffered from nervous prostration.
-
After weeks of relentless stress at work, she suffered from nervous prostration, leaving her unable to get out of bed.
-
His constant worry about the upcoming exam led to nervous prostration, making it hard for him to focus on anything.
-
The intense pressure of the project caused her a severe case of nervous prostration, preventing her from completing her tasks.
Synonyms
52
5.3
A time when someone is so stressed or upset they cannot live normally and need medical help
1
8.7
A sudden physical or mental collapse that happens from extreme tiredness
1
7.4
Extreme mental and physical tiredness after long stress or worry
Antonyms
How Exhausted
- Archaic
- Informal
120
3.9
78
3.6
92
4.2
10
1.0
Surface Forms
Morphology
The noun phrase directly combines 'nervous' (anxious, stressed) with 'prostration' (severe exhaustion/collapse), so the meaning 'extreme mental or physical exhaustion caused by nervousness' is predictable from the parts. This follows a regular adjective + noun compositional pattern common cross-linguistically, so a B1 learner who knows both constituent meanings would readily infer the MWE meaning.
Etymology
The phrase nervous prostration may come from a simple picture: nervous, meaning very worried or stressed, and prostration, meaning to 'lie flat' because you are very weak. It described people so tired in both mind and body that they would 'collapse' or be unable to work, so today it means being very tired and unable to do normal things.