constipation

Meanings

1. A state of the bowels in which the evacuations are infrequent and difficult, or the intestines become filled with hardened faeces.
2. The act of crowding anything into a lesser space, or the state of being crowded or pressed together; condensation.

Etymology

First attested in the beginning of the 15ᵗʰ century, in Middle English; inherited from Middle English constipacioun, borrowed from Medieval Latin constīpātiō or its Old French equivalent, from cōnstīpō + -tiō. By surface analysis, constipate + -ion.