When I am desperately trying to explain to someone what it is I feel, and having managed to summon up little more than a plethora of apparent contradictions, and stumbling nonsense phrases, I finally come to think that nothing short of cracking open my own chest with a crowbar and physically drawing my emotions out one by one and arranging them neatly across the table like display items at the local department store will do.

That is what comes first to mind when I think of alienation.

Al`ien*a"tion (#), n. [F. ali'enation, L. alienatio, fr. alienare, fr. alienare. See Alienate.]

1.

The act of alienating, or the state of being alienated.

2. Law

A transfer of title, or a legal conveyance of property to another.

3.

A withdrawing or estrangement, as of the affections.

The alienation of his heart from the king. Bacon.

4.

Mental alienation; derangement of the mental faculties; insanity; as, alienation of mind.

Syn. -- Insanity; lunacy; madness; derangement; aberration; mania; delirium; frenzy; dementia; monomania. See Insanity.

 

© Webster 1913.