Words / D / Medicine

dementia

noun/dɪˈmɛnʃə/

A2CEFR level
10/100Rarity: common
TechnicalRegister

A progressive decline in memory and reasoning.

Early dementia was slowing her recall of names.

Similar: cognitive decline

Origin: Latin demens 'out of one’s mind'.

Topic: Mental health in Medical English

Rarity runs from 0 (a word everyone knows) to 100 (almost never seen outside specialist or literary writing). Level is the word's real difficulty on the CEFR scale, from A1 to C2.

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More medicine words: Mental health