premenstrual syndrome
Word Rarity
Very rare
Frequency: Zipf frequency 2.07 in modern English
30
Scrabble Score
20
Letters
5
Syllables
13
Unique Chars
Meaning
noun
The physical and psychological malaise experienced by many women between ovulation and the onset of menstruation; premenstrual tension.
Uncountable
Example Sentences
- "The thiazides and similar compounds have also been used in patients with edema associated with nephritis and …the premenstrual syndrome…."
- "In The Premenstrual Syndrome, Dr. Katherina Dalton summarizes many studies of behavior change that show a large portion of crimes (63 percent in an English study, 84 percent in a French) are not distributed evenly over time, but clustered in the premenstrual interval along with suicides, accidents, a decline in the quality of schoolwork, decline in intelligence test scores, visual acuity, and response speed."
- "Premenstrual syndrome (PMS) takes a lot of bashing in the media. It is true that many women become more aggressive during this period, though they are rarely out of control...Therefore, any PMS symptoms that are perceived as unstable are due to the fact that women act more like men during this phase than at any other time in their cycles."
- "The term "premenstrual syndrome" first emerged in 1953 when Dr. Katharina Dalton used it to describe the same symptoms delineated by Dr. Frank [who coined premenstrual tension in 1931]."
- "The physical symptoms of this premenstrual syndrome include bloating, weight gain, breast tenderness, abdominal discomfort, lethargy and headache whilst the psychological symptoms include anxiety, irritability, aggression and loss of control."
Etymology
Coined by Katharina Dalton in 1953 to replace the earlier premenstrual tension, which she considered accidentally created the impression of focusing solely on PMS's mental aspects.