hypostasis

Noun

hypostasis (countable and uncountable, plural hypostases or hypostaseis)

1. (archaic) A sedimentary deposit, especially in urine.
   • Phi[sitian]. I view’d your vrine, and the Hipoſtates ^([sic – meaning Hipoſtaſis]) / Thick and obſcure doth make your danger great, […]c. 1587–1588 (date written), [Christopher Marlowe], Tamburlaine the Great. […] The Second Part […], 2nd edition, part 2, London: […] [R. Robinson for] Richard Iones, […], published 1592, →OCLC...
   • Thus the kidneys also have their particular excrement which is contained in it and is the hypostasis (deposit).1999, Paracelsus, “Opus Paramirum”, in Nicholas Goodrick-Clarke, transl., Essential Readings, North Atlantic Books, page 92
2. The essential person, specifically the single person of Christ (as distinguished from his ‘nature(s)’, human and divine), or of the three ‘persons’ of the Trinity (sharing a single ‘essence’).
   • the hypostases of Father, Son, and Holy Spirit
   • What did the God who hammered the universe together have to do with virtue, redemption, the strange doctrine of hypostasis?1985 September 1, Anthony Burgess, The Kingdom of the Wicked, London: Hutchinson & Co., →ISBN
3. The underlying reality or substance of something.
   • Rašnu, the "Judge", appears to be the hypostasis of the idea embodied in the common noun rašnu, "judging, one who judges".1975, Mary Boyce, History of Zoroastrianism, volume I, Brill, page 59
   • The One, Intellect and Soul, then, are the three transcendent sources – or hypostases – of existence.1999, John Gregory, editor, The Neoplatonists: A Reader, page 13
   1. A relationship between a name and a known quantity, as a cultural personification (i.e. objectification with personality) of an entity or quality.
   2. Referring to the hypostatic model of personality; i.e., asserting that humans present themselves in many different aspects or hypostases, depending on the internal and external realities they relate to, including different approaches to the study of personality.
4. The effect of one gene preventing another from expressing.
   • When penetrance is suppressed altogether, the term ‘epistasis’ (and ‘hypostasis’ of the suppressed gene) is used.1997, Vogul & Motulsky, Human Genetics: Problems and Approaches, page 141
5. Postmortem lividity; livor mortis; suggillation.
   • I am, of course, excluding the hypostasis produced by his having lain a whole week face downward in the cellar. That, naturally, is all in the front part of the body.1937, Dorothy L. Sayers, Busman's Honeymoon