This term is sometimes used to describe people, especially women, who are frenzied or frantic, overly emotional or out of control. It originates from the Greek word hystera, meaning uterus. The condition was first described in the ancient Egyptian Kahun Papyrus, which dates to 1900 BC and identifies the cause of hysterical disorders to movement of the uterus within the female body.
The term hysteria was used in the 19th century and early 20th century to describe “a neurotic condition peculiar to women and thought to be caused by a dysfunction of the uterus,” according to the Online Etymology Dictionary. Its meaning changed over time to mean “unhealthy emotions or excitement.”
In the 19th and early 20th centuries, doctors sometimes “healed” women with so-called hysteria with a clitoridectomy, or surgical removal of the clitoris. Until the 1950s doctors used “hysteria” to describe multiple mental health conditions, primarily affecting women.
In 1980 the American Psychiatric Association’s Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders finally removed hysteria from its list of psychiatric disorders. The term, along with the related terms hysterical and hysteric, is pejorative and should be used with caution.
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