metastasize
Meanings
- Of a disease (especially cancer) or a tumour: to form a metastasis (“a secondary focus away from the primary site”) in (a body organ).
- To disseminate or spread (something, often an undesirable thing), especially in a destructive manner.
- Of a disease (especially cancer) or a tumour: to undergo metastasis (“spreading from a primary site to one or more other sites in the body”).
- Of a thing, often one which is undesirable: to disseminate or spread, especially in a destructive manner.
Pronunciation
Word forms
Etymology
From metastasis + -ize (suffix forming verbs meaning to do things denoted by the adjectives or nouns the suffix is attached to). Metastasis is a 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”). The use of French métastase (“metastasis”) to refer to the spread of cancer was coined in 1829 by the French gynecologist Joseph Récamier (1774–1852).