noun
definition
An extreme urge to dance, popularly thought to have been caused by the bite of a tarantula (Lycosa tarantula) and prevalent in southern Italy in the 15th through 17th centuries.
synonyms
Examples of tarantism in a Sentence
The name tarantella, in use at the present time, applies both to a dance still in vogue in Southern Italy and also to musical pieces resembling in their stimulating measures those that were necessary to rouse to activity the sufferer from tarantism in the middle ages.
In the town of Taranto victims of the tarantula danced a frenzied tarantella to prevent death from tarantism.
Like all spiders, the tarantula possesses poison glands in its jaws, but there is not a particle of trustworthy evidence that the secretion of these glands is more virulent than that of other spiders of the same size, and the medieval belief that the bite of the spider gave rise to tarantism has long been abandoned.