metastasis
/məˈtæstəsəs/
Word Rarity
Rare
Frequency: 2.87 in modern English
12
Scrabble Score
10
Letters
4
Syllables
6
Unique Chars
Meaning
noun
The spread of something harmful to another location, such as the metastasis of a cancer.
Countable; Uncountable
noun
A sudden or rapid transition from one point, topic or argument to another, often to evade an uncomfortable subject or to redirect the discussion.
Countable; Uncountable
noun
The transference of a bodily function or disease to another part of the body, specifically the development of a secondary area of disease remote from the original site, as with some cancers.
Countable; Uncountable
Example Sentences
- "Stayed in her own house, searched her body each morning and examined her conscience each night for progressive symptoms of the metastasis she feared was in her."
- "Among the hypothesized diagnoses was metastatic carcinoma. In metastatic cancer, metastases are most frequent in the axial skeleton and are rare in the distal parts of the appendicular skeleton[…]."
Etymology
Learned borrowing from Late Latin metastasis (“(rhetoric) rapid or sudden transition from one argument, point, or topic to another”), and from its etymons Koine Greek μετάστασις (metástasis, “(rhetoric) rapid or sudden transition from one argument, point, or topic to another”) and Ancient Greek μετάστασις (metástasis, “change; removal; (medicine) movement of disease, pain, etc., from one part of the body to another”), from μετᾰ- (metă-, prefix denoting change in condition or position) (possibly ultimately from Proto-Indo-European *meth₂) + στᾰ́σῐς (stắsĭs, “condition, state; position”) (ultimately from Proto-Indo-European *steh₂- (“to stand (up)”)), modelled after μεθιστάναι (methistánai, “to change; to remove”). By surface analysis, meta- + stasis. In reference to the spread of cancer, a semantic loan from French métastase, whose use to refer to it was coined in 1829 by the French gynecologist Joseph Récamier (1774–1852). The plural form metastases is a learned borrowing from Late Latin metastases.
Origin
Word Breakdown
Regional Pronunciation
- American English: /məˈtæstəsəs/
- British English: /mɪˈtæstəsɪs/