• libido •
Pronunciation: lê-bai-do, lê-bee-do • Hear it!
Part of Speech: Noun
Meaning: 1. (Psychoanalysis) The mental energy from the id behind the sex drive. 2. The sex drive itself. 3. Any strong urge, drive or need for something.
Notes: This word comes with two adjectives: libidinal "pertaining to the libido" and libidinous "lustful, preoccupied with sex". The latter has two nouns, the clumsy libidinousness and the smoother libidinosity. Libidinal has only an adverb, libidinally.
In Play: Generally, the sense of this word refers to the sexual urge: "Phil Anders always trips over his libido in his courtships of women." However, it is being used more and more as any strong, uncontrollable urge: "The political libido can be defined as the urge to leave the world a better place than you found it."
Word History: Today's Good Word was first introduced, untranslated, in the 1892 translation of Richard von Krafft-Ebing's Psychopathia Sexualis, but it was popularized by the Austrian neurologist Sigmund Freud, beginning in his 1909 Selected Papers on Hysteria. Latin libido "desire, lust" came from PIE leubh- "to care for, love", which also went on to become Sanskrit lubhyati "desires strongly", Greek lupta "lover, courtesan", Albanian laps "to crave", Lithuanian liaupsė "praise", Russian l'ubit' "to love", Serbian l'ubiti "to love", Bulgarian lyubya "to love", Macedonian l'ubov "love", German lieben "to love", Dutch liefde "love", and English love and lief "as soon as, willingly, glad" (leof in Old English). (Now, let's recognize Wordmaster William Hupy for submitting today's, his 172nd, remarkable Good Word since 2006.)
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