All 21 Uses of
hysteria
in
Atlas Shrugged
- The hysterical voice that came on the wire was that of his political man in Mexico.†
Chpt 1.4hysterical = exceedingly funny (resulting in uncontrollable laughter); or exhibiting excessive, uncontrollable emotion
- But the loudest screaming of the most hysterical editorial roused no emotion in himwhile a variation of a decimal point in a laboratory report on a test of Rearden Metal made him leap to his feet in eagerness or apprehension.†
Chpt 1.6
- Through the blank seconds of recapturing her mind, she kept telling herself: You're hysterical ....don't be preposterous ....it's just a coincidence of names-while she knew, in certainty and numb, inexplicable terror, that this was the Hugh Akston.†
Chpt 1.10
- "I'm inclined to believe that that's a rumor created by public hysteria," said Dr. Ferris dryly.†
Chpt 2.1 *
- There were the voices abruptly choked off, the pools of silence, then sounds of a different nature; the rising, hysterical inflections of uselessly repeated questions, the unnatural whispers, a woman's scream, the few spaced, forced giggles of those still trying to pretend that nothing was happening.†
Chpt 2.2hysterical = exceedingly funny (resulting in uncontrollable laughter); or exhibiting excessive, uncontrollable emotion
- But today, there was a slate-gray sky in the windows of the courtroom, which promised the first snowstorm of a long, hard winter; the last of the country's oil was vanishing, and the coal mines were not able to keep up with the hysterical scramble for winter supplies.†
Chpt 2.4
- "You must learn to take a philosophical attitude," said Dr. Simon Pritchett to a young girl student who broke down into sudden, hysterical sobs in the middle of a lecture.†
Chpt 2.5
- The train was loaded to capacity, and the shrill notes of hysteria in the confusion of voices were the pleas for space in vestibules and aisles.†
Chpt 2.5
- God knows what is liable to happen at a hysterical time like the present and in a situation as delicate as this.†
Chpt 2.6hysterical = exceedingly funny (resulting in uncontrollable laughter); or exhibiting excessive, uncontrollable emotion
- When he raised his head, Chalmers saw that the car stood intact and still; he heard the moans of his companions and the first shriek of Laura Bradford's hysterics.†
Chpt 2.7
- She was laughing with hysterical relief.†
Chpt 2.9hysterical = exceedingly funny (resulting in uncontrollable laughter); or exhibiting excessive, uncontrollable emotion
- It was an irregular beat, with sudden screeches and short, sharp cracks, a sound like the broken laughter of hysteria, with the fitful jerking of the car to match it.†
Chpt 2.10
- A woman shrieked suddenly, with the demanding petulance of hysteria, "What are we going to do?"†
Chpt 2.10
- There was a sound of submerged hysteria in the whispers.†
Chpt 3.3
- There's all sorts of hysterical stuff being whispered about it, but what they whisper mostly is that 'no decent man will work for those people.'†
Chpt 3.3hysterical = exceedingly funny (resulting in uncontrollable laughter); or exhibiting excessive, uncontrollable emotion
- She felt certain that it was not the country's panic he wanted to stave off, but his own-that he, and Chick Morrison and Wesley Mouch and all the rest of the looting crew needed her sanction, not to reassure their victims, but to reassure themselves, though the allegedly crafty, the allegedly practical idea of deluding their victims was the only identification they gave to their own motive and their hysterical insistence.†
Chpt 3.3
- He was laboring to sound cynical, skeptical, superior and hysterical together, to sound like a man who sneers at the vanity of all human beliefs and thereby demands an instantaneous belief from his listeners.†
Chpt 3.3
- The sickening thing about it, thought Rearden, was that the speeches were only half-lies; the other half, in their tone of hysterical urgency, was the unstated wish to have it somehow be true.†
Chpt 3.6
- Some spoke of him in shrill curses-others whispered, with a look of guilt and terror, as if a nameless retribution were now to descend upon them-some tried, with hysterical evasiveness, to act as if nothing had happened.†
Chpt 3.7
- "You goddamn cannibals!" screamed a woman in the midst of a crowded movie theater, breaking into sudden, hysterical sobs-and the audience showed no sign of astonishment, as if she were screaming for them all, "There is no cause for alarm," said official broadcasts on December 5.†
Chpt 3.8
- Dr. Ferris was asking impatiently, with the crackling energy of a man who feels at home in a world of hysteria.†
Chpt 3.9
Definition:
a state of excessive, uncontrollable emotion
In addition to being the adjective form of hysteria, the form hysterical can also indicate that something is exceedingly funny (leading to uncontrollable laughter)