anal retentive

1. 1.

   a stage in psychosexual development when the child's interest is concentrated on the anal region; fixation at this stage is said to result in orderliness, meanness, stubbornness, compulsiveness, etc.

   Synonymsanal

   psychoanalysis

Questions about anal retentive

What does anal retentive mean?

anal retentive means "a stage in psychosexual development when the child's interest is concentrated on the anal region; fixation at this stage is said to result in orderliness, meanness, stubbornness, compulsiveness, etc.".

What is another word for anal retentive?

Close synonyms include anal. Each sense on this page lists its own synonyms, because a word with several meanings rarely has one substitute that works for all of them.

Is anal retentive a common word?

anal retentive is banded "Rare" — specialist or archaic — most readers will not have met it. The band comes from how often the word appears in a large corpus of everyday English, not from an editor's impression.