acrasia
nounUK /əˈkɹeɪ.zɪ.ə/ · US /əˈkɹeɪ.zi.ə/
Etymology Learned borrowing from Late Latin acrasia (“lack of temperance”), and from its etymon Ancient Greek ᾰ̓κρᾱσῐ́ᾱ (ăkrāsĭ́ā, “bad mixture”), from ἄκρᾱτος (ákrātos, “pure, unmixed; of a person: intemperate, violent”) + -ῐ́ᾱ (-ĭ́ā, suffix forming feminine abstract nouns). Ἄκρᾱτος (Ákrātos) is derived from ᾰ̓- (ă-, prefix forming terms having a sense opposite to the stems or words to which it is attached) + κεράννυμι (keránnumi, “to blend, mix; to cool or temper by mixing”) (ultimately from Proto-Indo-European *ḱerh₂- (“head, top; horn”)) + -τος (-tos, suffix forming adjectives). Doublet of acrasy.
- Him fortuned (hard fortune ye may gheſſe) / To come, vvhere vile Acraſia does vvonne [live], / Acraſia a falſe enchauntereſſe, / That many errant knightes hath fovvle fordonne: […]1590, Edmund Spenser, “Book II, Canto I”, in The Faerie Queene. […], London: […] [John Wolfe] for William Ponsonbie, →OCLC, stanza 51, page 201:
- VVaſte your hours in the lap of diſſipation: reſign yourſelf up to the faſcinations of Acrasia; and ſport in the Bovver of Bliss. Cover your tables vvith delicacies, at the expence of your famiſhed clans.1774, Thomas Pennant, “[Ard-maddie]”, in A Tour in Scotland, and Voyage to the Hebrides; MDCCXXII, Chester, Cheshire: […] John Monk, →OCLC, page 428:
3 more examples
- It has been already remarked, that, by the humoral pathologists, organic diseases in general, and of course inflammation, were attributed to an akrasia or intemperies, consisting in an inordinate flow to certain organs of one or other of the four principal fluids of the body; that of blood producing the phlegmenous inflammation; that of yellow bile, the erythematic, or, as they call it, the erysipelatous; that of the black bile, the scirrhous; that that of the phlegm, the leucophlegmatic, or œdematous, an affection now known to be not of itself inflammatory, although a frequent consequence of inflammation.[1842, John Fletcher, “Proximate Cause”, in John J. Drysdale, John R. Russell, editors, Elements of General Pathology, Edinburgh: MacLachlan, Stewart, & Company, →OCLC, pages 158-159:
- The psychological doctrine of the Gorgias is more mature. It recognizes the presence in the soul of irrational or good-independent desires (epithymiai), and represents the virtuous soul as one characterized by harmony and order, which requires the restraining of desire […] The Protagoras, by contrast, denies the reality of acrasia and thus implicitly denies the existence of good-independent desires.1988, Charles H. Kahn, “On the Relative Date of the Gorgias and the Protagoras”, in Julia Annas, editor, Oxford Studies in Ancient Philosophy, volume VI, Oxford, Oxfordshire: Clarendon Press, →ISBN, page 84:
- The root of all character weaknesses and all addictions is in acrasia; the root of failure also underlies acrasia, along with the personal ruins they become many lives due to this inclination to incontinence and to the cessation of the virtue of crasia – […] crasia is the virtue of force of self-control. The anecdote is told, to illustrate this concept, of the great French writer Victor Hugo, that he had to finish writing a novel within a certain period at the demands of his publisher, but this great character was very given to go out, socialize and district himself with other tasks – with the consequent waste of time and energy to write that this supposes – so, unable to beat his acrasia directly, he opted for an indirect way to beat it: he put all his clothes in a cupboard that was locked so that he could not go outside.2020, Aimar Rollan, “Acrasia”, in Karla Nallely, transl., Reflex: Reflections, Poems and Other Stories, [Hackensack, N.J.]: Babelcube, →ISBN:
- Derived terms
- acrasial