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dysmenorrhea

/dɪs.mɛ.nəˈɹi.ə/noun

dysmenorrhea is a noun meaning “Painful menstruation (menstrual pain), viewed as a symptom in any of various disorders” (English Wiktionary, September 2026). It is spelled D-Y-S-M-E-N-O-R-R-H-E-A, and it appears about once in every 18 million words in written English (wordfreq, 2021 data). The plural of dysmenorrhea is dysmenorrheas.

What does dysmenorrhea mean?

noun

  1. 1

    Painful menstruation (menstrual pain), viewed as a symptom in any of various disorders.

  2. 2

    Painful menstruation (menstrual pain), viewed as a disorder in its own right (and thus a diagnosis).

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

How do you pronounce dysmenorrhea?

  • /dɪs.mɛ.nəˈɹi.ə/

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

Forms of dysmenorrhea

  • dysmenorrheas plural
  • dysmenorrhoea
  • dysmenorrhœa

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

How common is dysmenorrhea?

Dysmenorrhea appears about once in every 18 million words in written English, the 127,184th 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).

Dysmenorrhea in Spanish, French, German and Portuguese

In the sense painful menstruation:

LanguageWords
Frenchdysménorrhée
GermanMenstruationsbeschwerden, Regelschmerzen, Dysmenorrhoe
Portuguesedismenorreia
Spanishdismenorrea

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 dysmenorrhea come from?

From dys- + meno- + -rrhea = dys- + menorrhœa.

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