Definitions

from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 5th Edition.

  • adjective Affected with epilepsy.
  • adjective Of, relating to, or associated with epilepsy.
  • noun One who has epilepsy.

from The Century Dictionary.

  • Of, pertaining to, or of the nature of epilepsy.
  • Affected with epilepsy.
  • noun One affected with epilepsy.

from the GNU version of the Collaborative International Dictionary of English.

  • noun One affected with epilepsy.
  • noun A medicine for the cure of epilepsy.
  • adjective Pertaining to, affected with, or of the nature of, epilepsy.

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License.

  • adjective Of, or relating to epilepsy.
  • adjective Of, or relating to an epileptic or epileptics, epileptic people.
  • noun A person who has epilepsy.
  • noun archaic A medicine for the cure of epilepsy.

from WordNet 3.0 Copyright 2006 by Princeton University. All rights reserved.

  • adjective of or relating to or characteristic of epilepsy
  • noun a person who has epilepsy

Etymologies

from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 4th Edition

[French épileptique, from Late Latin epilēpticus, from Greek epilēptikos, from epilēpsis, epilepsy; see epilepsy.]

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License

epi- + -leptic

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Examples

  • Saturday Night Live's Kristen Wiig, the boys of Flight of the Conchords managed to mispronounce the word epileptic in about a handful of different ways, give a number of dogs seizures with their strobe lights, and wrestle each other to the ground in a catfight-like manner.

    Entertainment Weekly's PopWatch 2009

  • Saturday Night Live's Kristen Wiig, the boys of Flight of the Conchords managed to mispronounce the word epileptic in about a handful of different ways, give a number of dogs seizures with their strobe lights, and wrestle each other to the ground in a catfight-like manner.

    Entertainment Weekly's PopWatch 2009

  • Saturday Night Live's Kristen Wiig, the boys of Flight of the Conchords managed to mispronounce the word epileptic in about a handful of different ways, give a number of dogs seizures with their strobe lights, and wrestle each other to the ground in a catfight-like manner.

    Entertainment Weekly's PopWatch 2009

  • Saturday Night Live's Kristen Wiig, the boys of Flight of the Conchords managed to mispronounce the word epileptic in about a handful of different ways, give a number of dogs seizures with their strobe lights, and wrestle each other to the ground in a catfight-like manner.

    Entertainment Weekly's PopWatch 2009

  • Certain epileptic patients, known as split-brain patients, have had the corpus callosum surgically severed in order to control their seizures (although I believe there are better treatments now, so that the operation is no longer practiced). [

    Backing Into an Evidentiary Standard for ID 2007

  • Lyrica is an anti-epileptic, which is probably why it helps.

    The Lesbian sleepover, a specialist, collecting things, and local politics Elizabeth McClung 2008

  • I may say, however, that I have some data already at hand in which certain types of epileptic phenomena connected with infantile cerebral hemiplegia would show that the so-called epileptic constitution is much less marked in these cases, but is present, however, to a certain degree.

    The Journal of Abnormal Psychology 1916

  • The essential kernel of Stekel's view is that the epileptic is a repressed criminal.

    The Journal of Abnormal Psychology 1916

  • I hope to show that the main roots of the so-called epileptic alteration in general necessarily lie in the primary make-up of such individuals, and that the seizure phenomena of epilepsy only intensify and make more marked the fundamental make-up when the disease has definitely fastened itself upon the individual.

    The Journal of Abnormal Psychology 1916

  • "The so-called epileptic cry is not invariably present, and petit mal is sometimes the half-way house to haut mal," responded Sir Henry.

    The Shrieking Pit 1907

Comments

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  • Alexander the Great was an epileptic.

    May 7, 2008

  • Perhaps, but I bet he'd have preferred being called: a person who has epilepsy. :)

    May 8, 2008

  • One of the soldiers in "Black Hawk Down" was this.

    September 10, 2012