apheresis

English

Alternative forms

aphaeresis (British, Canada)
aphæresis (archaic)

Etymology

From Latin aphaeresis, from Ancient Greek ἀφαίρεσις (aphaíresis, “a taking away”), from ἀφαιρέω (aphairéō) (from ἀφ- (aph-), variant of ἀπό (apó, “off, away from”) before an aspirated vowel) + αἱρέω (hairéō, “to take; to snatch”)) + -σις (-sis, suffix forming nouns of action); the grammatical sense developed in Latin.[1]

Pronunciation

(Received Pronunciation) enPR: əfîʹrĭsĭs, IPA^(key): /əˈfɪəɹɪsɪs/,[1]
(US) IPA^(key): /əˈfɛɹəsɪs/ (linguistics)
(US) IPA^(key): /ˌæfəˈɹisɪs/ (medicine)

Noun

apheresis (countable and uncountable, plural aphereses) (US, Canada)

(linguistics, prosody) Elision, suppression, or complete loss of a letter or sound (syllable) from the beginning of a word, such as the development of special from especial; procope.[1]
Synonyms: pheresis, procope
Hyponym: aphesis
Coordinate term: syncope
(medicine, specific, still current) The removal of blood from a patient, and the removal of certain components (such as platelets) from that blood, followed by the transfusion of the filtered blood back to the donor (patient).
Synonyms: pheresis, hemapheresis
(medicine, general, obsolete) Extirpation or extraction of a superfluity (especially a pathological one) from the body, especially blood.

Derived terms

aphaeretic, apheretic

Translations

loss of letters or sounds from the beginning of a word

Catalan: afèresi (ca) f
Dutch: aferesis, aferese
Finnish: afereesi
French: aphérèse (fr) f
German: Aphärese (de) f, Aphäresis (de) f
Hungarian: aferézis
Latin: aphaeresis, ablatio (la)
Polish: afereza (pl) f
Portuguese: aférese (pt) f

Romanian: afereză (ro) f
Russian: афере́з (ru) m (aferéz)
Serbo-Croatian:
Cyrillic: афѐреза f
Roman: afèreza (sh) f
Spanish: aféresis (es) f
Walloon: sbetchaedje (wa) m
Welsh: gwraidd-doriad m

medicine: removal, filtering and returning of blood

Finnish: afereesi

Portuguese: aférese (pt) f

References

“aphæresis” listed in the Oxford English Dictionary [2^nd Ed.; 1989]

Anagrams

Pharisees

[OED-1] “aphæresis” listed in the Oxford English Dictionary [2^nd Ed.; 1989]