Mind & EmotionGreek → English
Monomania
/ˌmɒnəˈmeɪniə/noun
An obsession with one idea or object, to the exclusion of everything else.
The Greek roots
μόνος
mónos
single, alone
μανία
manía
madness, frenzy
Literally: “single madness”
The story of the word
Jean-Étienne Esquirol proposed monomanie around 1810 for a mind sound on every subject but one, and the courts seized on it at once, since a defendant could now be mad about a single thing and answerable for the rest of his conduct. The diagnosis collapsed within two generations under the weight of its own subdivisions. What survived is the literary sense, fixed for good by Ahab, whose pursuit of the whale Melville calls monomaniac.
- How it travelled
- Ancient Greek → French → English
- First recorded
- 19th century
Same family
monopolymonologuemonotonemania
In a sentence
Six years on the same manuscript had shaded into monomania.
There is a thin line between focus and monomania, and he crossed it in April.