vaginismus
/væd͡ʒɪˈnɪzməs/noun
vaginismus is a noun meaning “A painful muscular contraction of the vagina when attempting to insert something, such as a tampon or a penis, into it” (English Wiktionary, September 2026). It is spelled V-A-G-I-N-I-S-M-U-S, and it appears about once in every 18 million words in written English (wordfreq, 2021 data). The plural of vaginismus is vaginismuses.
What does vaginismus mean?
noun
- 1
A painful muscular contraction of the vagina when attempting to insert something, such as a tampon or a penis, into it.
Source: English Wiktionary, dump of September 2, 2026 (CC BY-SA 4.0), through kaikki.org (Wiktextract).
How do you pronounce vaginismus?
- /væd͡ʒɪˈnɪzməs/
Source: English Wiktionary, dump of September 2, 2026 (CC BY-SA 4.0), through kaikki.org (Wiktextract). Recordings: LL-Q1860_(eng)-Neøn-vaginismus.wav, Wikimedia Commons (author and licence on each file's page).
Forms of vaginismus
- vaginismuses plural
Source: English Wiktionary, dump of September 2, 2026 (CC BY-SA 4.0), through kaikki.org (Wiktextract).
How common is vaginismus?
Vaginismus 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).
Vaginismus in Spanish, French, German and Portuguese
In the sense muscular contraction:
| Language | Words |
|---|---|
| French | vaginisme |
| German | Vaginismus, Scheidenkrampf |
| Portuguese | vaginismo |
| Spanish | vaginismo |
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 vaginismus come from?
From vagina + -ismus.
Source: English Wiktionary, dump of September 2, 2026 (CC BY-SA 4.0), through kaikki.org (Wiktextract).