mania-, -mania, -maniac, -maniacal, -manic, -manically, -maniacally
(Greek: a specific mental disorder or obsessive preoccupation with something; madness, frenzy; obsession, or abnormal desire for or with something or someone; also, an excessive enthusiasm or fondness for something that is not safe or advantageous)
2. A mental illness in which patients are driven to repeat the same act, such as washing their hands, over and over again, usually for many hours: Some compulsive disorders, as indicated in ablutomanias, are often considered to be "obsessive-compulsive psychoneuroses".
Some ablutomanias are enormously time-consuming. A woman named Beth felt compelled to wash her hands in a certain way after touching "unclean" objects, namely from fingers to wrist, from wrist to elbow, and from elbow to upper arm, and then to repeat the performance several times until her anxiety was over. As a result, Beth's hands often became painfully raw.
Arthur had ablutomanias that involved washing in a certain ritualistic order whenever he had a bath or cleaned objects. He said, "When I wash clothes or clean anything—floor, carpet, windows, and so on—I have to clean them in a specific way to make sure I do not miss anything. I can never hurry because I would not feel that it has been done properly."
![Bathing starts during the day.](http://www.wordinfo.info/words/images/bath-1-sm.gif)
![Bathing starts during the day.](http://www.wordinfo.info/words/images/bath-2-sm.gif)
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![A fat man thinks he is physically well developed.](http://www.wordinfo.info/words/images/fatman-skinnyimage.gif)
Could this guy also have a significant obsession known as callomania, or the delusion that a person thinks he or she is "beautiful" or, in this case, physically well developed and handsome?
An intense enthusiasm or abnormal love of having many cats around, sometimes even when conditions are not suitable for their existence.
![Woman has an excessive fondness for cats.](http://www.wordinfo.info/words/images/mania-cats.gif)
![An abnormal desire to live in the open areas or in isolation from humans.](http://www.wordinfo.info/words/images/agromania-1.jpg)
Go to this Word A Day Revisited Index
so you can see more of Mickey Bach's cartoons.
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Cross references of word families that are related directly, or indirectly, to: "anger, angry; rage, wrath, fury; rave": fur-, furi-; ira-; lysso-; rab-, rav-.