| 释义 |
-mania
a terminal element, repr. Gr. µανία mania in composition.
There were in Gr. a few compounds in -µανία (rare and chiefly post-classical), expressing the general sense ‘a certain kind of madness’, or ‘the state of being mad after some object’, and corresponding as nouns of quality or condition to the related adjs. (a much more frequent formation) in -µανής = ‘-mad’. Examples are γυναικοµανία mad passion for women, ἐρωτοµανία love-madness, ἱπποµανία mad love for horses, ὑδροµανία ‘water-madness’, hydrophobia. In the 16th and 17th c. a number of quasi-Greek compounds, denoting species of mania, were invented and used in medical Latin, and some of these, as nymphomania, have been adopted in Eng. Other technical or quasi-technical words, formed in the 19th c., are kleptomania, lypemania, megalomania. In the 17–18th c. the currency of F. manie in the sense of a ‘craze’ or passion (e.g. for some pursuit, or the collection of some class of objects) suggested the formation of a number of quasi-Gr. compounds such as bibliomanie mania for books, métromanie mania for metre, mélomanie mania for song; and hybrid formations such as Anglomanie mania for things English, tulipomanie mania for tulips. Several of these words have been adopted in Eng. with the ending -mania, and in the 19th c. it became somewhat common to invent nonce-words with this ending. Examples are bancomania, a craze for establishing banks; Graiomania [L. Grai-us Greek], passion for things Greek; Italomania, wild enthusiasm for Italy; Queenomania, (applied by Southey to the popular devotion to the cause of Queen Caroline); scribbleomania, a craze for scribbling. The ns. in -mania have, actually or potentially, correlative ns. in -maniac; the words in -mane are of rare occurrence, and are viewed as Gallicisms.
1788Trifler No. 8. 104 'Till the wide Nugae-mania spread. 1792Coleridge Lett. (1895) I. 35, I never had the scribble⁓mania stronger on me than for these last three or four days. 1815[W. H. Ireland] (title), Scribbleomania. 1820Southey in Life & Corr. (1850) V. 53 The Queenomania will probably die away ere long. 1837Blackw. Mag. XLI. 848 During all the late fury of land-jobbing schemes in the west, of building extravagances in the east, of banco⁓mania everywhere,..the cotton manufacture alone remains unscathed. 1855Maurice Learn. & Work. 254 This..would be a fair representation of the motives and arguments which created the Roman Graiophobia. And the Roman Graio⁓mania in the young men will have had as intelligible an explanation. 1860Ld. Derby in Ld. Malmesbury's Mem. (1884) II. 213 His Italomania and his Free Trade policy. |