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dys-

Bad; difficult.

Greek dus‑, hard, bad.

This form appears most commonly in medical terms, such as dyspepsia (Greek duspeptos, difficult to digest), indigestion; dysphagia (Greek phagein, eat), difficulty or discomfort in swallowing, as a symptom of disease; dyslexia (Greek lexis, speech, through a confusion with Latin legere, to read), a general term for disorders that involve difficulty in learning to read or interpret words, letters, and other symbols.

A dysphemism (Greek phēmē, speaking) is a derogatory or unpleasant term used instead of a pleasant or neutral one, the opposite of euphemism; a dystopia (Greek topos, place) is an imagined place or state in which everything is unpleasant or bad, the opposite of utopia; dysfunctional refers to something not operating normally or properly, or someone unable to deal adequately with normal social relations; the chemical element dysprosium (see ‑ium) was so named from the related Greek dusprositos, hard to get at.

Its opposite is eu‑.

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