Mind & EmotionGreek → English
Erotomania
/ɪˌrɒtəˈmeɪniə/noun
The fixed delusion that another person, often a stranger of higher standing, is secretly in love with you.
The Greek roots
ἔρως
érōs
sexual love, desire
μανία
manía
madness, frenzy
Literally: “love madness”
The story of the word
English had erotomania by the seventeenth century for lovesickness serious enough to count as an illness. The modern sense is narrower and stranger, and it belongs to Gaëtan de Clérambault, who set out the pattern in 1921 from a patient convinced that George V was signalling to her through the curtains of Buckingham Palace. The delusion is about being loved, not about loving, which is what separates it from ordinary obsession.
- How it travelled
- Ancient Greek → scientific coinage → English
- First recorded
- 17th century
Same family
erotickleptomaniamegalomaniamaniac
In a sentence
The stalking charge rested on an erotomania that had run for six years.