Home UK English anxiety

Meaning of anxiety in English:

anxiety

Pronunciation /aŋˈzʌɪəti/

See synonyms for anxiety

Translate anxiety into Spanish

nounanxieties

mass noun

  • 1A feeling of worry, nervousness, or unease about something with an uncertain outcome.

    ‘he felt a surge of anxiety’
    • ‘anxieties about the moral decline of today's youth’
    • ‘Our worries and anxieties evaporated in an instant, and within half an hour my wife, Jayne, was asking how we could buy one.’
    • ‘The worries and anxieties of his years at Vétheuil seemed a distant memory.’
    • ‘He appears to have resolved these anxieties by stressing the moral gulf between his characters and his own beliefs.’
    • ‘Meditation allows us to relinquish our worries and anxieties and awaken our innate energy and creativity.’
    • ‘He found it very soothing as all of his worries and anxieties were rushed out of his head.’
    • ‘High office cuts you off from the real world; makes you prey to anxieties and irrational fears.’
    • ‘Brady met the world in the same way that a child is inclined to do, before we drum our fears and anxieties into him or her.’
    • ‘The effort may allow some of your students to express their own fears and anxieties.’
    • ‘He thrived on his performing and did not have any related stresses or anxieties.’
    • ‘He added that farmers' anxieties had been increasing in Ryedale following the recent new cases in Wharfedale.’
    • ‘Companies who exacerbate their employees' anxieties could still be paying for this failure long into the new year.’
    • ‘This asks a great deal of the public and it is not surprising that they have doubts and anxieties.’
    • ‘The man seemed to have grasped the essence of standing aloof from worldly anxieties and vexations.’
    • ‘After all, it can be argued, what's wrong with getting children to talk about their anxieties and problems?’
    • ‘Although he imagines that many of them must have similar problems and anxieties as others in the world.’
    • ‘Owen's anxieties never quite leave him, despite his charmed, only-child existence.’
    • ‘At the other end of life, projections that we can expect to live longer have become a focus for demographic anxieties.’
    • ‘But in many respects, people's anxieties are not primarily focused on the big issues.’
    • ‘If only we could negotiate our differences rather than dwell on the anxieties of difference.’
    worry, concern, apprehension, apprehensiveness, consternation, uneasiness, unease, fearfulness, fear, disquiet, disquietude, perturbation, fretfulness, agitation, angst, nervousness, nerves, edginess, tension, tenseness, stress, misgiving, trepidation, foreboding, suspense
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    1. 1.1Psychiatry A nervous disorder marked by excessive uneasiness and apprehension, typically with compulsive behaviour or panic attacks.
      as modifier ‘she suffered from anxiety attacks’
      • ‘They do not seem to know that depression and anxiety can cause eating disorders.’
      • ‘As you learn to modify your compulsive behaviour, your anxiety levels should lessen.’
      • ‘However, the fact that she suffers from anxiety and panic attacks is less certain of being admitted.’
      • ‘Two points need to be made with respect to the diagnosis of generalized anxiety disorder.’
      • ‘People may show symptoms of depression and anxiety, panic attacks, or agoraphobia.’

  • 2with infinitive Strong desire or concern to do something or for something to happen.

    ‘the housekeeper's eager anxiety to please’
    • ‘Achievements since are the result of an anxiety to play it safe.’
    • ‘The only cementing force was greed and the anxiety to cling on to power.’
    • ‘Madame des Ursins confesses in her voluminous correspondence that she made herself a burden to the king in her anxiety to exclude him from all other influence.’
    • ‘In her eagerness to serve her husband, and in perfect innocence of the legal aspect of her act, she does not give the matter much thought, except for her anxiety to shield him from any emergency that may call upon him to perform the miracle in her behalf.’
    • ‘A soldier describes his anxiety to go home after the civil war ended.’
    eagerness, keenness, desire, impatience, longing, yearning
    View synonyms

Origin

Early 16th century from French anxiété or Latin anxietas, from anxius (see anxious).