One possible way to picture it: a person whose feelings have burst past the point where they can be reined in — crying, screaming, or laughing in they cannot stop. The word points at the loss of the brake, not at which emotion is pouring out.
From the word’s history
From Greek hystera "womb", via Latin hystericus — old medicine blamed uncontrollable emotional fits on the womb, which is why the word originally described a medical condition and still carries "fit you cannot control".
字根來自希臘文 hystera「子宮」，經拉丁文 hystericus 進入英語。古代醫學把無法控制的情緒發作歸咎於子宮，所以這個字一開始是個病名；今天雖然醫學說法早就被推翻了，但「一陣自己壓不住的發作」這個核心畫面留了下來。
Wiktionary (hysterical, hysteric) — from Latin hystericus, from Ancient Greek ὑστερικός, from ὑστέρα "womb"
登入就可以看每一支怎麼連回核心畫面。
原始詞典資料3 筆記錄
以下是外部詞典記錄的用法，摘錄並精簡格式，我們還沒有寫成教學內容。上面的說明才是我們自己寫的；有些用法可能上面已經講過了。
hystericaladj/hɪˈstɛɹɪkəl/
- 1
Of, or arising from hysteria.
- Henrietta gasped for breath; but she swallowed down the hysterical emotion, and signed with her hand for Walter to go on.
- An event of this nature, a marriage, or a refusal, or a proposal, thrills through a whole household of women, and sets all their hysterical sympathies at work.
- 2
Having, or prone to having hysterics.
- 3
Provoking uncontrollable laughter.
- She was a fat, round little woman, richly apparelled in velvet and lace, […]; and the way she laughed, cackling like a hen, the way she talked to the waiters and the maid,[…]—all these unexpected phenomena impelled one to hysterical mirth, and made one class her with such immortally ludicrous types as Ally Sloper, the Widow Twankey, or Miss Moucher.
- There is a certain irony in all of this because in their hysterical use of charge of “double standard” – that Israel is being “singled out for criticism”– it is Israel’s supporters who are themselves guilty of a “double standard”, since, if they were to have their way, it is Israel that would be singled out as the only country that cannot be criticised.
摘錄自 英文維基詞典 English Wiktionary，已精簡格式；依 CC BY-SA 4.0 授權使用，改動後的內容同樣以此授權提供。