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From The Collaborative International Dictionary of English v.0.44 [gcide]:
Prostration \Pros*tra"tion\, noun [L. prostratio: cf. F. prostration.]
1. The act of prostrating, throwing down, or laying fiat; as, the prostration of the body.
2. The act of falling down, or of bowing in humility or adoration; primarily, the act of falling on the face, but usually applied to kneeling or bowing in reverence and worship.
A greater prostration of reason than of body. --Shak.
3. The condition of being prostrate; great depression; lowness; dejection; as, a postration of spirits. ''A sudden prostration of strength.'' --Arbuthnot.
4. (Med.) A latent, not an exhausted, state of the vital energies; great oppression of natural strength and vigor.
Note: Prostration, in its medical use, is analogous to the state of a spring lying under such a weight that it is incapable of action; while exhaustion is analogous to the state of a spring deprived of its elastic powers. The word, however, is often used to denote any great depression of the vital powers.
From WordNet (r) 2.0 [wn]:
prostration
noun
1: a condition marked by dizziness and nausea and weakness caused by depletion of body fluids and electrolytes [syn: {heat exhaustion}, {heat prostration}]
2: abject submission; the emotional equivalent of prostrating your body
3: the act of assuming a prostrate position
From Moby Thesaurus II by Grady Ward, 1.0 [moby-thes]:
190 Moby Thesaurus words for "prostration": accubation, accumbency, aching heart, adoration, adulation, adynamia, agony, agony of mind, anemia, anguish, apple-polishing, ass-kissing, atony, backscratching, bale, bend, bending the knee, bitterness, blah feeling, bleeding heart, bloodlessness, bob, bootlicking, bouleversement, bow, bowing, bowing and scraping, breakdown, broken heart, brown-nosing, cachexia, cachexy, care, carking care, cave-in, circulatory collapse, co-worship, collapse, convulsion, couchancy, cowardice, crack-up, crackup, cringing, crouch, crushing, cult, cultism, cultus, curtsy, debasement, debilitation, debility, decumbency, deference, deflation, dejection, depression, depth of misery, desolation, despair, desperation, despondency, devotion, dipping the colors, downfall, draining, duck, dulia, dullness, enervation, etiolation, exhaustedness, exhaustion, extremity, faintness, fall, fatigue, fawnery, fawning, feebleness, flabbiness, flaccidity, flunkyism, footlicking, genuflection, grief, groveling, handshaking, heartache, heartfelt grief, heartgrief, heavy heart, homage, humiliation, hyperdulia, idolatry, implosion, impotence, inclination, infelicity, ingratiation, insinuation, kneeling, kowtow, kowtowing, lamentation, languishment, languor, lassitude, latria, listlessness, loll, lounging, lowness, lying, lying down, making a leg, mealymouthedness, melancholia, melancholy, misery, nervous breakdown, nervous exhaustion, nervous prostration, neurasthenia, nod, obeisance, obsequiousness, overthrow, overturn, paralysis, parasitism, pining, presenting arms, proneness, reclination, reclining, recumbency, repose, respect, reverence, sabotage, sadness, salaam, salutation, salute, scrape, servility, shortness, sluggishness, softness, sorrow, sorrowing, sponging, sprawl, squat, squatness, squattiness, standing at attention, stoop, strengthlessness, stumpiness, subjacency, submission, submissiveness, subversion, suicidal despair, supination, supineness, sycophancy, timeserving, toadeating, toadying, toadyism, transcendent wonder, truckling, tufthunting, unhappiness, upheaval, upset, veneration, weakliness, weakness, weariness, woe, woefulness, worship, worshiping, wretchedness
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