anorexia nervosa

noun

"anorexia-nervosa" is a 15-letter English headword indexed on PlainSpell.

The verdict

“anorexia nervosa” is uncommon English (outside the top frequency list), classed as a noun. The kind of spelling people second-guess.

Unranked
below top-frequency English
16
letters

According to Wiktionary data (CC BY-SA, analyzed September 3, 2026) - An eating disorder characterized by self-starvation due to an irrational fear of gaining weight.

Corpus desk

Index EN-anorexia-nervosa · anorexia nervosa · English

anorexia nervosa · unranked · 0 variants · 0 confusables

  • FREQ-UNRANKED Unranked
  • LEN-MEGA 16 letters
  • VOW-8 8 vowels
  • CONFUS-0 No pairs
  • VAR-0 0 variants
  • BOOK-THIN "A" thin
  • PHOTO-UNK Peer pending

Read with this headword: Spelling guide for this pattern

Desk codes from Wiktionary headword shape, FrequencyWords rank tier, confusable-pair count, generated misspelling depth, letter-cohort book size, and photo-finish peer. Not a difficulty grade.

Key facts for anorexia nervosa
PropertyValue
Headwordanorexia nervosa
LanguageEnglish
Part of speechNoun
Letters16
Misspellings tracked0
Confusable pairs0
SourceWiktionary (kaikki.org)

Long-tail rank of “anorexia nervosa” in English

anorexia nervosasits beyond the 100,000 most-frequent English words, in the long tail of technical, archaic, or otherwise rare vocabulary where spelling doubt tends to strike hardest.

Beyond rank #100,000. Source: FrequencyWords open word-frequency list.

Rare enough to double-check

anorexia nervosa is uncommon English outside the top frequency list, classed as anoun. Rarity is why readers land here mid-draft. Gloss: "An eating disorder characterized by self-starvation due to an irrational fear of gaining weight.".

anorexia nervosa doesn't appear in our generated misspelling index, since its letter sequence doesn't invite the usual edit-distance slips. This entry stands alone in our confusable dataset, since nothing in our dataset looks or sounds close enough to cause mix-ups.

Etymologically, the entry records: From the scientific term anorexia nervosa (1957), from the symptom anorexia (“loss of appetite”), from Ancient Greek ἀν- (an-, “without”) + ὄρεξις (órexis, “appetite, desire”), and Latin nervōsa (“nervous”). The correct English form is anorexia nervosa, spelled A-N-O-R-E-X-I-A- -N-E-R-V-O-S-A.

Definition

  1. 1
    An eating disorder characterized by self-starvation due to an irrational fear of gaining weight.

Etymology

From the scientific term anorexia nervosa (1957), from the symptom anorexia (“loss of appetite”), from Ancient Greek ἀν- (an-, “without”) + ὄρεξις (órexis, “appetite, desire”), and Latin nervōsa (“nervous”).

This word in other languages

Definitions, pronunciation, and etymology for this entry are drawn from Wiktionary via the kaikki.org structured extract (CC BY-SA). See the methodology for how each field is sourced and updated.

Frequently Asked Questions

How do you spell "anorexia nervosa"?
"anorexia nervosa" is spelled A-N-O-R-E-X-I-A- -N-E-R-V-O-S-A.
What does "anorexia nervosa" mean?
As a noun, "anorexia nervosa" means: An eating disorder characterized by self-starvation due to an irrational fear of gaining weight.
What is the origin of the word "anorexia nervosa"?
From the scientific term anorexia nervosa (1957), from the symptom anorexia (“loss of appetite”), from Ancient Greek ἀν- (an-, “without”) + ὄρεξις (órexis, “appetite, desire”), and Latin nervōsa (“nervous”). See the full etymology section above for more details.
Is PlainSpell free to use?
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Source: Wiktionary (via kaikki.org) Structured Wiktionary extract

Source: FrequencyWords open word-frequency list