#GAReads | What It Really Means To Call A Woman Hysterical
“What It Really Means To Call A Woman Hysterical”:
How did we come to this point? The origins of hysterical have something to do with it. Hysterical’s earliest meaning was “of, relating to, or characterized by hysteria,” and while we now think of hysteria as irrational panic, it was, for centuries, a medical diagnosis. Hysteria comes from the Greek hysterikós, which means “suffering in the womb.”
So, yeah, the ancient Greeks believed that when a woman was behaving irrationally—or in a way that they considered to be irrational—it was because her uterus was literally wandering around her body causing trouble.