Meaning & use
Cacoethes
Last updated
An irresistible urge or compulsion to do something inadvisable.
See it in a sentence
His cacoethes for buying rare books had emptied his savings account.
The professor joked about his cacoethes scribendi, an uncontrollable urge to write.
A note on using this word
Borrowed from Greek via Latin, the word appears most famously in the phrase "cacoethes scribendi" (an itch for writing), coined by the Roman satirist Juvenal.
Words with a similar meaning
compulsionmania
Choose a synonym to suit the sentence. Meanings can overlap without being identical.
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