pathological
If something is caused by a physical or mental disease, it is pathological, like someone whose need to wash the floor every evening is part of a pathological compulsion for cleanliness, or a growth on someone’s elbow that turned out to be a pathological.
Pathological comes from a Greek word, pathologikos, which means “treating of diseases” — pathos means “suffering.” Anyone who studies or works with diseases, from their causes to their symptoms, identifies how the disease affects its victims, in other words, its pathological effects. Remember that this is a medical distinction. If a person has, for example, obsessive-compulsive disorder, his or her repetitive actions are pathological.
FULL DEFINITIONS OF: pathological
1 adj of or relating to the practice of pathology
“pathological laboratory”
- Synonyms:
- pathologic
2 adj caused by or evidencing a mentally disturbed condition
“a pathological liar”
“a pathological urge to succeed”
- Synonyms
- neurotic, psychoneurotic
affected with emotional disorder
adj caused by or altered by or manifesting disease or pathology
“pathological bodily processes”
- Synonyms:
- diseased, morbid, pathologic,
- unhealthy: not in or exhibiting good health in body or mind
USAGE EXAMPLES
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A pathological fear of politics or social context whatsoever.
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If a patient hasn’t sufficiently cleared her gut before colonoscopy, the gastroenterologist may miss a pathological patch, or a polyp.
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Contemporary techniques of anatomical and pathological depiction can achieve such accuracy and objectivity that any attempt to aestheticise them seems egregious.
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Real-time brain recordings will trace pathological symptoms down to single neurons.
wendytheredhead 