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An irrational but irresistible motive for a belief or action
Answer for the clue "An irrational but irresistible motive for a belief or action ", 9 letters:
cacoethes
Alternative clues for the word cacoethes
Word definitions for cacoethes in dictionaries
The Collaborative International Dictionary
Word definitions in The Collaborative International Dictionary
Cacoethes \Cac`o*["e]"thes\, n. [L., fr. Gr. ???????? of ill habits, ?? ???????? an ill habit; kako`s bad + ? habit] A bad custom or habit; an insatiable desire; as, caco["e]thes scribendi, ``The itch for writing''. --Addison. (Med.) A bad quality ...
Wiktionary
Word definitions in Wiktionary
n. 1 compulsion; mania 2 (context medicine obsolete English) A bad quality or disposition in a disease; an incurable ulcer.
Douglas Harper's Etymology Dictionary
Word definitions in Douglas Harper's Etymology Dictionary
"itch for doing something," 1560s, from Latinized form of Greek kakoethes "ill-habit, wickedness, itch for doing (something)," from kakos "bad" (see caco- ) + ethe- "disposition, character" (see ethos ). Most famously, in Juvenal's insanabile scribendi ...
WordNet
Word definitions in WordNet
n : an irrational but irresistible motive for a belief or action [syn: mania , passion ]
Usage examples of cacoethes.
Stormed by an attack of his cacoethes scribendi, after those few blank days at Becket, Felix saw nothing amiss with his young daughter.
Here, by the fire, far from the freneticism of the bongoing living room, Cacoethes held forth discussing poetry with the local wits, in tones about like this: "Marshall Dashiell is too busy cultivating his beard and driving his Mercedes Benz around cocktail parties in Chevy Chase and up Cleopatra's needle, O.
The other poets were either horn-rimmed intellectual hep cats with wild black hair like Alvah Goldbook, or delicate pale handsome poets like Ike O'Shay (in a suit), or out-of-this-world genteel-looking Renaissance Italians like Francis DaPavia (who looks like a young priest), or bow-tied wild-haired old anarchist fuds like Rheinhold Cacoethes, or big fat bespectacled quiet booboos like Warren Coughlin.