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emotion

n. C / U
B1 Intermediate Oxford US //ˈiˌmoʊʃən// UK //ɪmˈəʊʃən// emo·tion Archaic General-service

n. a strong feeling like love, anger, or fear. It is how your mind and body react to things that happen to you.

n. a strong instinctive feeling, such as love, fear, or joy, as distinguished from reasoning or knowledge. Often involves physiological changes and mental states that arise spontaneously rather than through conscious effort.


SIMPLE

She struggled to hide her emotion during the sad movie.

CONTEXTUAL

The actor's performance was so powerful that it stirred deep emotion in everyone in the audience.

COMPLEX

Psychologists often distinguish between primary and secondary responses, noting that a single event can trigger a complex cascade of emotion that evolves over several hours.

Origin

Borrowed from Middle French emotion (modern French émotion), from émouvoir (“excite”), based on Latin ēmōtus, past participle of ēmoveō (“to move out, move away, remove, stir up, irritate”), from ē- (“out”) (variant of ex-), and moveō (“move”).

Usage

Uncountable when referring to the general capacity for feeling; countable when referring to specific types of feelings like 'anger' or 'joy'.

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