Feelings of worry, nervousness, or unease, often about something uncertain in the future; plural of anxiety.
From Latin 'anxietas' (from 'anxius' = troubled, narrow), originally referring to physical tightness in the chest. The word entered English through Old French and became associated with psychological worry by the 1500s.
Anxiety literally means 'narrowness' in Latin because it physically feels like your chest tightens—scientists have found that our modern brains can't tell the difference between real dangers and imagined ones!
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