metastasize
/məˈtæstəˌsaɪz/
Word Rarity
Very rare
Frequency: 2.01 in modern English
22
Scrabble Score
11
Letters
4
Syllables
7
Unique Chars
Meaning
verb
Of a disease (especially cancer) or a tumour: to form a metastasis (“a secondary focus away from the primary site”) in (a body organ).
American usage; Transitive verb
verb
To disseminate or spread (something, often an undesirable thing), especially in a destructive manner.
American usage; Transitive verb
verb
Of a disease (especially cancer) or a tumour: to undergo metastasis (“spreading from a primary site to one or more other sites in the body”).
American usage; Intransitive verb
verb
Of a thing, often one which is undesirable: to disseminate or spread, especially in a destructive manner.
American usage; Intransitive verb
Example Sentences
- ""I remember the first time he woke up throwing up, and my first thought wasn't, 'Oh he has the stomach flu,'" she [Rene McNall-Knapp] said. "It was, 'Oh, it's gone to his brain, and it's metastasized his brain, and he's throwing up because of that.'""
- "In a broader sense, criticism as a form is in trouble. And celebrities like [Ariana] Grande, like [Michael] Che, like [Olivia] Munn, who swat at it to the delight of their fans, concerningly seem to metastasize the problem."
- "On other screens are closeups of skin pores, before and after, details of regimes for everything, your hands, your neck, your thighs. Your elbows, especially your elbows: aging begins at the elbows and metastasizes."
- "Your lump could be a secondary cancer metastasized from the bowel. I had a patient like that not long ago."
- "Late last month, a conservative website called The Federalist published an article advocating that healthy, young Americans deliberately infect themselves with Covid-19, […] If enough Americans expose themselves to the virus and become immune, the theory goes, the country would have a mobilized cadre of immune citizens. […] The article was widely discredited by public health experts and economists, as both logically dubious and ethically specious, but such thinking has already metastasized."
Etymology
From metastasis + -ize (suffix forming verbs meaning to do things denoted by the adjectives or nouns the suffix is attached to). Metastasis is a 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”). The use of French métastase (“metastasis”) to refer to the spread of cancer was coined in 1829 by the French gynecologist Joseph Récamier (1774–1852).
Origin
Word Breakdown
- Prefix: metastasis
- Root: *steh₂-, metastasis, μετάστασις, *meth₂
- Suffix: -ize
Regional Pronunciation
- American English: /məˈtæstəˌsaɪz/
- British English: /mɪˈtæstəsaɪz/
Usage
- American usage
- Transitive verb
- Intransitive verb