Word.ws English Dictionary

apheresis

/əˈfɪəɹɪsɪs/US/əˈfɛɹəsɪs/

apheresis noun: 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.

Noun

apheresis (countable and uncountable, plural aphereses)

  1. (Canada, US, rhetoric) 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.
    Synonyms:
    pheresis, procope
  2. (Canada, US, 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).
  3. (Canada, US, general, obsolete) Extirpation or extraction of a superfluity (especially a pathological one) from the body, especially blood.

apheresis meaning in Tamil, Tagalog and Persian

apheresis in Tamil

இரத்தம் இறக்கல்

apheresis in Tagalog

loss of letters or sounds from the beginning of a word
pagpupugot, aperesis

apheresis in Persian

loss of letters or sounds from the beginning of a word
سرزدایی sarzodāyī, حذف آغازی hazf-e āġāzī

Synonyms of apheresis

Forms of apheresis

pluralaphereses
alternative Canada UKaphaeresis
alternative form (archaic)aphæresis

Origin of apheresis

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.

Words formed from apheresis

Questions about apheresis

What does apheresis mean?
Apheresis means 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.
What is apheresis in Tamil?
Apheresis in Tamil is இரத்தம் இறக்கல். See Apheresis meaning in Tamil.
What part of speech is apheresis?
Apheresis is a noun.
How do you pronounce apheresis?
Apheresis is pronounced /əˈfɪəɹɪsɪs/ (UK).
What is the plural of apheresis?
The plural of apheresis is aphereses.

Words near apheresis in the dictionary

  1. aphenphosmphobia
  2. aphephobia
  3. aphercotropism
  4. apheresed
  5. aphereses
  6. apheresis
  7. apheresized
  8. apheretic
  9. apheses
  10. aphesis
  11. apheta

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: apheresis (page history and authors); apheresis (Tamil Wiktionary) (page history and authors). Text available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 license. Word.ws reformatted the entry and added links. Wiktionary data of 2026-09-02.

Last updated:

Pronunciation audio from Wikimedia Commons, each file under its own free license: LL-Q1860 (eng)-Pvanp7-apheresis.wav.

Cite this entry: “apheresis.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/apheresis. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.