0 a sudden and powerful expression of strong feeling, especially one that you cannot control: --
1 a sudden and powerful expression of strong feeling: --
Thus, after a series of paroxysms the state forsakes the senate and takes refuge in the camp.
Or take, again, paroxysms or rapid heart rate in pregnancy—acceleration up to 150 or 200 in the minute.
It is a sentence which means that that man's frame will gradually waste away, and he will be harassed by constant paroxysms of suffering.
The world is undergoing great paroxysms of revolution.
Perhaps we should examine the facts rather than indulge in a great paroxysm based on absolutely nothing.
Often things have to come to a crisis, a paroxysm, before there can be recovery.
These trials determined that opium equaled quinine in its capacity to arrest 'the paroxysms of intermittent fever' associated with recurring malarial attacks, if given in sufficient quantities to the sufferer.
Freud was correct, then, that grief and loss do empty us for a time, depleting us in waves and paroxysms.
