metastasis
Syllables: me·ta·sta·sis/mɪˈtæstəsɪs/
More pronunciations (1)Fewer pronunciations
British/mɪˈtastəsɪs/
metastasis noun: a change in nature, form, or quality.
Noun
metastasis (countable and uncountable, plural metastases)
- A change in nature, form, or quality.
- Stayed in her own house, searched her body each morning and examined her conscience each night for progressive symptoms of the metastasis she feared was in her.1963, Thomas Pynchon, V.
- The spread of something harmful to another location, such as the metastasis of a cancer.
- A sudden or rapid transition from one point, topic or argument to another, often to evade an uncomfortable subject or to redirect the discussion.
- The transference of a bodily function or disease to another part of the body, specifically the development of a secondary area of disease remote from the original site, as with some cancers.
- Among the hypothesized diagnoses was metastatic carcinoma. In metastatic cancer, metastases are most frequent in the axial skeleton and are rare in the distal parts of the appendicular skeleton[…].2023, Simon Mays, “The Macroscopic Study of Human Skeletal Paleopathology” (chapter 2), in The Routledge Handbook of Paleopathology, Routledge, →DOI, →ISBN, page 27
metastasis meaning in Tamil, Indonesian and Vietnamese
metastasis in Tamil
- உருமாற்றம், உறுப்பு இடமாற்றம், புற்றுநோய் உடலில் பரவுதல், இடம் மாறல், நோய் இடம் மாறல், மாற்றிடம் புகல்
metastasis in Indonesian
- transference of a bodily function or disease to another part of the body
- metastasis, metastase
metastasis in Vietnamese
- transference of a bodily function or disease to another part of the body
- di căn
Examples of metastasis in a sentence
- In CRC, we could trace the only path from metastaticity to lymph node metastasis.
- For blood vessel-borne metastasis, disseminated tumor cells (DTCs) intravasate into blood vessels and survive in the circulation.
- Twenty-nine patients (54.7%) had visceral metastases, and 27 patients (50.9%) underwent surgery including radical cystectomy and nephroureterectomy.
Forms of metastasis
| plural | metastases |
|---|
Origin of metastasis
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”). By surface analysis, meta- + stasis. In reference to the spread of cancer, a semantic loan from French métastase, whose use to refer to it was coined in 1829 by the French gynecologist Joseph Récamier (1774–1852). The plural form metastases is a learned borrowing from Late Latin metastases.
Words formed from metastasis
Questions about metastasis
- What does metastasis mean?
- Metastasis means a change in nature, form, or quality.
- What is metastasis in Tamil?
- Metastasis in Tamil is உருமாற்றம், உறுப்பு இடமாற்றம், புற்றுநோய் உடலில் பரவுதல். See Metastasis meaning in Tamil.
- What part of speech is metastasis?
- Metastasis is a noun.
- How do you pronounce metastasis?
- Metastasis is pronounced /mɪˈtæstəsɪs/ (UK).
- What is the plural of metastasis?
- The plural of metastasis is metastases.
Words near metastasis in the dictionary
Source and license
Adapted from Wiktionary: metastasis (page history and authors); metastasis (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.
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Pronunciation audio from Wikimedia Commons, each file under its own free license: LL-Q1860 (eng)-Vealhurl-metastasis.wav.
Cite this entry: “metastasis.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/metastasis. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.