Hypnosis

How to spell hypnosis

8 letters · 3 syllables

How to pronounce hypnosis

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does hypnosis mean?

1. nounAn induced state resembling sleep in which a person becomes highly responsive to suggestion.

Hypnosis in a sentence

• The therapist used hypnosis to help her stop smoking.

• Under hypnosis the patient recalled details he had forgotten for years.

Where does hypnosis come from?

Language of origin: Greek

This word traces back to the Greek hypnos, which simply meant 'sleep' and was also the name of the Greek personification of sleep himself. In the nineteenth century the Scottish surgeon James Braid coined related terms for the trance-like state he was studying, drawing on that ancient root because the condition resembled sleep, even though it is not true sleep at all. The ending -osis is a familiar Greek suffix marking a condition, state, or process, the same one seen in words like 'diagnosis' and 'osmosis'. By the 1880s 'hypnosis' had settled into English in its modern medical and psychological sense. The silent 'h' at the start and the 'y' standing in for a short 'i' sound are the spots that trip writers, both inherited directly from the Greek spelling.

How the word is built

• hypno- (from Greek hypnos: sleep)
• -osis (condition or process)