PROVINCETOWN — The middle of August is a uniquely busy time on the Outer Cape. Children are a week or two away from going back to school, so families are taking their last vacations of the summer. Partygoers flock to Provincetown in the tens of thousands for Carnival. From this cocktail of chaos emerges a metaphorical ailment: “Augustitis.”

Those who work in public-facing businesses are likely to know the term, a catch-all word for the physical and mental exhaustion that can set in at this time of year.

Augustitis may be invented, but it has a pedigree: Mary Heaton Vorse used the term in Time and the Town, her 1942 chronicle of life in Provincetown.

“The town is alive, moving in a deep stream which sometimes overflows,” she wrote. “The mixture of summer people and town gets too strong and goes off in a roar. People get a disease called Augustitis when the mixture gets too rich.”

A common theme among the afflicted is accumulated exhaustion.

“Memorial Day, you’re happy to see everyone,” says Scott Dinsmore, owner of Scott Dinsmore Antiques on Commercial Street. Later in the summer life becomes “a grind,” he says. “You get tired and cranky.”

“What makes it worse is we’re all so tired,” says Gary Sandoval, who works at Pop+Dutch sandwich shop just up the street from Dinsmore. “Patience is hanging by a thread.”

“Everyone has known since they’re young about Augustitis,” says Avis Johnson, 75, who works as an attendant at the Grace Hall parking lot. “Here’s what we think about August,” she says, before blowing a raspberry with her tongue.

Johnson says that August visitors seem more stressed out than the June and July crowds. “Everyone’s in a hurry to have a good time,” she says. “It’s like trying to have a three-month vacation condensed into a week.”

Johnson admits, though, that “we need” August.

Jaelin Companik, who works at Board Stiff across from town hall, says it’s not the tourists who are stressed in August but the townies.

“Employees are more on edge, and we have to work longer hours,” Companik says. “The tourists are the same. Some people are rude, but that’s true all year.”

Ruthanne Morgan, who runs Native Cape Cod Seafood, says that tourists in Provincetown “are pretty friendly. I’ve met a lot of nice people here.”

Nonetheless, by the end of summer her energy is flagging, Morgan says. “The older you get, the harder it gets to go from slow to fast.”

Not everyone the Independent asked wanted to talk about Augustitis. One worker said she had a lot of opinions but was afraid they would land her in trouble. A town employee, when asked about Augustitis, said, “We’re not allowed to have an opinion on that.”

Kim Leonard, owner of the Nut House in Provincetown, says that she doesn’t believe in Augustitis.

“We’re grateful for the month of August,” says Leonard. “We wait all year for it. April is boring, May is boring, then the season comes, the people come, and you’re going to complain?”

Eric Lesh, who owns E. Lesh gallery in Provincetown, says the days around Carnival are his favorite. His business relies on gay clients, he adds, and August brings the highest number of gay tourists.

Eren Bilgin, a busboy at Provincetown’s 1620 Brewhouse, says that July felt harder than August, even though August is far busier. Being exhausted has made him feel more connected to his friends in town.

As the season goes on, “you make bonds with people,” Bilgin says, “and when people are tired, they open up more.”