paroxysm ˈper-ək-ˌsi-zəm , ˈpa-rək- noun
: a sudden uncontrollable attack
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The word paroxysm has appeared in 10 articles on NYTimes.com in the past year, including on Sept. 11 in “The Other Way Covid Will Kill: Hunger” by Peter S. Goodman, Abdi Latif Dahir and Karan Deep Singh:
In Juba, the capital of South Sudan, the pandemic was merely the most recent form of grave danger.
A sense of crisis has prevailed since a paroxysm of violence four years ago in a long-running civil war fueled by ethnic division. Amid the fighting, people fled the surrounding countryside for refuge in camps inside the city. Without access to their fields, many became dependent on food distributed by relief agencies along with anything they could buy at the market.
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