The AI-powered English dictionary
countable and uncountable, plural tenesmuses
(medicine) A continual or recurrent but ineffectual inclination to evacuate the bowels, caused by disorder of the rectum or other illness. quotations examples
The general complaints of disease among us, were a dizziness in the head, great weakness of the joints, and violent tenesmus, most of us having had no evacuation by stool since we left the ship.
1790, William Bligh, A Narrative of the Mutiny