cathartic

comparative more cathartic · superlative most cathartic · alternative obsolete cathartick

1. Purgative; inducing mental or physical catharsis.

   Shaving, my favorite activity, is very cathartic.

2. That which releases emotional tension, especially after an overwhelming experience.

   I don’t know if [Kamala] Harris found writing 107 Days cathartic, but reading it certainly wasn’t.

   2025 September 22, Arwa Mahdawi, “107 Days by Kamala Harris review – no closure, no hope”, in The Guardian, →ISSN

   2 more examples

   "So, there are real opportunities to create real change with enforcement." Prosser describes how some of that change is also cathartic to those who have been directly affected by incidents on the railway, such as the families who have lost loved ones.

   2023 November 1, Ian Prosser talks to Stefanie Foster, “Safety Mission: Possible”, in RAIL, number 995, page 37

   For some, Saturday’s protests were cathartic, a show of force and solidarity by progressives who had struggled to pick themselves up from last November’s election defeat.

   2025 April 7, Simon Montlake, Caitlin Babcock, Ali Martin, Cameron Pugh, Jingnan Peng, “Is the anti-Trump ‘resistance’ starting to find its voice again?”, in The Christian Science Monitor

plural cathartics · alternative obsolete cathartick

1. medicineA laxative.

   The disease was regarded as pneumonia so far advanced that suppuration seemed to have supervened; bleeding, blisters, expectorants, and cathartics diminished the symptoms; the pulse continued frequent, hard, full, but always regular.

   1833, R. J. Bertin, translated by Charles W. Chauncy, Treatise on the Diseases of the Heart, and Great Vessels, Philadelphia: Carey, Lea & Blnachard, page 165

   1 more example

   As Jan McTavish notes, when the physician diagnosed the headache's origins in the digestive system, particularly constipation, the antidote might entail cathartics (substances that accelerate defecation) or emetics (inducers of vomiting) and other regulators of the digestive process.

   2022, Seth Garfield, Guaraná […] , Chapel Hill: The University of North Carolina Press, →ISBN