nocturesis
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English[edit]
Etymology[edit]
From New Latin; surface analysis parses the constituents as the noct- inflection of Latin nox (as seen also in nocturnal) + uresis.
Noun[edit]
nocturesis (countable and uncountable, plural enureses)
- (medicine, uncommon) Nocturnal enuresis: involuntary urination (urinary incontinence) at night, especially during sleep.
- (medicine, rare) Nocturia (urinary frequency and/or urgency at night, prompting awakening and trips to the toilet).
Usage notes[edit]
The word is no longer rare, but it was long rare enough that not even medical dictionaries have entered it, although it has existed in the medical literature for many decades. Both its rarity and its absence from dictionaries contributed to its polysemy (as developed in the pre-web era): it more often means nocturnal enuresis, but occasionally a writer intends it to be synonymous with nocturia, which is quite reasonable given that it is morphologically parallel with that word (and in fact that etymonic parsing might well have been its original meaning).