tenesmus

[ tuh-nez-muhs, -nes- ]

noun

, Pathology.

1. a straining to urinate or defecate, without the ability to do so.

tenesmus

/ -ˈnɛs-; tɪˈnɛzməs /

noun

1. pathol an ineffective painful straining to empty the bowels in response to the sensation of a desire to defecate, without producing a significant quantity of faeces

Derived Forms

• teˈnesmic, adjective

Word History and Origins

Origin of tenesmus¹

1520–30; < Medieval Latin, variant of Latin tēnesmos < Greek teinesmós, equivalent to teín ( ein ) to stretch + -esmos noun suffix

Word History and Origins

Origin of tenesmus¹

C16: from Medieval Latin, from Latin tēnesmos, from Greek teinesmos, from teinein to strain

Example Sentences

The result: GI distress and tenesmus, the painful sensation of needing to go number-two even when your bowels are empty.

From Time

In other cases there is diarrhoea with rumbling in the bowels, but without pain or tenesmus.

From Project Gutenberg

The urine is scanty and high colored; there is sometimes scalding in urination and vesical tenesmus, and at the acme of the fever traces of albumen may be detected.

From Project Gutenberg

In irritant poisoning also there is generally severe abdominal pain—not so much colicky and paroxysmal as constant and burning; the stools are not so copious as in cholera, and they do not possess the rice-water aspect, but are rather dark, bloody, and fetid, and are voided with tenesmus or with heat in the anus; and even when the urine is suppressed it is less persistently and completely so than in cholera, and attempts to void it are attended with vesical tenesmus and strangury.

From Project Gutenberg

They are preceded by rumbling and gurgling noises in the abdomen, are voided without colic or tenesmus, and are followed by a remarkable sense of exhaustion or faintness, which is sometimes also accompanied with nausea, and, if they are very frequent and copious, cramps are apt to be felt in the calves of the legs.

From Project Gutenberg