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analgesia

/ˌæn.əlˈd͡ʒiː.ʒə/noun

analgesia is a noun meaning “The inability to feel pain” (English Wiktionary, September 2026). It is spelled A-N-A-L-G-E-S-I-A and has 5 syllables, and it appears about once in every 4 million words in written English (wordfreq, 2021 data). The plural of analgesia is analgesias.

What does analgesia mean?

noun

  1. 1

    The inability to feel pain.

    epidural analgesia

  2. 2

    A process of temporarily reducing the ability to feel pain; the provision of this service.

    This office procedure is quick and straightforward, but it does require some analgesia.

  3. 3

    proscribedA medication that performs this action: one that relieves pain.

    apply an analgesia

Source: English Wiktionary, dump of September 2, 2026 (CC BY-SA 4.0), through kaikki.org (Wiktextract).

How do you pronounce analgesia?

  • UK /ˌæn.əlˈd͡ʒiː.zi.ə/
  • US /ˌæn.əlˈd͡ʒiː.ʒə/
  • US /ˌæn.əlˈd͡ʒiː.ʒi.ə/

Analgesia has 5 syllables (counted from the pronunciation).

Source: English Wiktionary, dump of September 2, 2026 (CC BY-SA 4.0), through kaikki.org (Wiktextract). Recordings: LL-Q1860_(eng)-Vealhurl-analgesia.wav, LL-Q1860_(eng)-Wodencafe-analgesia.wav, Wikimedia Commons (author and licence on each file's page).

Forms of analgesia

  • analgesias plural
  • antalgesia

Source: English Wiktionary, dump of September 2, 2026 (CC BY-SA 4.0), through kaikki.org (Wiktextract).

How common is analgesia?

Analgesia appears about once in every 4 million words in written English, the 61,481st most frequent word form in the list.

Source: written frequency: wordfreq 3.1 (a 2021 snapshot of Wikipedia, subtitles, news, books, web text and social media).

Analgesia in Spanish, French, German and Portuguese

In the sense absence of the sense of pain:

LanguageWords
Frenchanalgésie, analgie
GermanAnalgesie
Portugueseanalgesia, analgia
Spanishanalgesia

Source: English Wiktionary, dump of September 2, 2026 (CC BY-SA 4.0), through kaikki.org (Wiktextract). Translations are Wiktionary's, by sense; a linked word has its own PlainSpell page.

Where does analgesia come from?

From New Latin analgēsia, from Ancient Greek ἀναλγησίᾱ (analgēsíā, “want of feeling, insensibility”), from ἀνάλγητος (análgētos), from ἀν- (an-, “not”) + ἀλγέω (algéō, “feel bodily pain, suffer”) + -τος (-tos, adjectival suffix).

Source: English Wiktionary, dump of September 2, 2026 (CC BY-SA 4.0), through kaikki.org (Wiktextract).