Word.ws English Dictionary

prophases

prophases noun: the actual reasons for going to war. These may differ from proschemata, the pretexts offered to the public. Also the plural of prophase.

Noun

prophases (plural prophases or prophaseis)

  1. The actual reasons for going to war. These may differ from proschemata, the pretexts offered to the public.

Also used as

prophases is also the plural of prophase.

Forms of prophases

pluralprophases
pluralprophaseis

Origin of prophases

Ancient Greek πρόφασις (próphasis, “pretense, pretext, excuse”), first popularized by Thucydides, who attempted to discern Athens' alethestate prophasis, or "truest reason" for waging war on Sparta in the Peloponnesian War.

Questions about prophases

What does prophases mean?
Prophases means the actual reasons for going to war. These may differ from proschemata, the pretexts offered to the public.
What part of speech is prophases?
Prophases is a noun.
What is the plural of prophases?
The plural of prophases is prophases.

Words near prophases in the dictionary

  1. prophanities
  2. prophanity
  3. propharyngeal
  4. prophase
  5. prophaseis
  6. prophases
  7. prophasic
  8. prophe-lie
  9. prophe-lied
  10. prophe-lies
  11. prophe-lying

Source and license

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