apheresis

English

Alternative forms

• aphaeresis (UK, 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.

Pronunciation

• enPR: əfîʹrĭsĭs, IPA^(key): /əˈfɪəɹɪsɪs/,
• IPA^(key): /əˈfɛɹəsɪs/ (linguistics)
• IPA^(key): /ˌæfəˈɹisɪs/ (medicine)

Noun

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

1. (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.

   Synonyms: pheresis, procope

   Hyponym: aphesis

   Coordinate term: syncope

2. (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

3. (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
• (deprecated template usage) {{trans-mid}}
• 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
• (deprecated template usage) {{trans-mid}}
• Portuguese: aférese (pt) f

Further reading

• Apheresis on Wikipedia.Wikipedia
• Apheresis (linguistics) on Wikipedia.Wikipedia

Anagrams

• Pharisees