Definitions

from The Century Dictionary.

  • noun In medicine, the mixture of the constituents of a fluid, as the blood; hence, temperament; constitution.
  • noun In grammar, a figure by which two different vowels are contracted into one long vowel or into a diphthong, as alēthea into alēthē, teicheos into teichous. It is otherwise called syneresis.

from the GNU version of the Collaborative International Dictionary of English.

  • noun (Med.) A mixture of constituents, as of the blood; constitution; temperament.
  • noun (Gram.) A contraction of two vowels (as the final and initial vowels of united words) into one long vowel, or into a diphthong; synæresis; as, cogo for coago.

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License.

  • noun obsolete One's constitution; the balance of humours in a person's body.
  • noun A mixture or combination.
  • noun linguistics The contraction of a vowel or diphthong at the end of a word with a vowel or diphthong at the start of the following word.

Etymologies

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License

From Ancient Greek κρᾶσις (krāsis, "mixture").

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Examples

  • The only physical cause for the practice which suggests itself to me and that must be owned to be purely conjectural, is that within the Sotadic Zone there is a blending of the masculine and feminine temperaments, a crasis which elsewhere occurs only sporadically.

    The Book of The Thousand Nights And A Night 2006

  • What then shall we say of the change? that it is a combination (crasis) of these humors having different powers toward one another.

    On Ancient Medicine 2007

  • It leads us back to the supposedly long-abandoned crasis theory which attributed an important role in the development and overcoming of disease to the peculiarities of the mixing of the substances solved in the body fluids.

    Emil von Behring - Nobel Lecture 1967

  • He was not so successful in establishing his doctrine of crasis based upon humoral pathology and just here Virchow's fruitful activity begins.

    The Catholic Encyclopedia, Volume 10: Mass Music-Newman 1840-1916 1913

  • Ádintaú, formed by crasis from a*d*e and intau, may refer to the words of the old men who have handed down these traditions.

    Osage Traditions James Owen Dorsey 1871

  • The only physical cause for the practice which suggests itself to me and that must be owned to be purely conjectural, is that within the Sotadic Zone there is a blending of the masculine and feminine temperaments, a crasis which elsewhere occurs only sporadically.

    Arabian nights. English Anonymous 1855

  • "The roots of the Coptic language appear to have been generally monosyllabic, and the derivatives have been formed by a very simple system of prefixing, inserting, and affixing certain letters, which have usually undergone but little change, not having been incorporated with the root, nor melted down by crasis, nor softened by any euphonic rules."

    Notes and Queries, 1850.12.21 A Medium of Inter-communication for Literary Men, Artists, Antiquaries, Geneologists, etc. Various 1852

  • That the soul in all its operations is strangely affected by and held down to the particular crasis and constitution of the corporeal part is indubitable.

    Sermons Preached Upon Several Occasions. Vol. III. 1634-1716 1823

  • For a man may be naturally inclined to pride, lust, anger, and strongly inclined so too, (forasmuch as these inclinations are founded in a peculiar crasis and constitution of the blood and spirits,) and yet by

    Sermons Preached Upon Several Occasions. Vol. I. 1634-1716 1823

  • That which promotes and adds to the impressions of pain, is the delicate and exact crasis and constitution of the part or faculty aggrieved.

    Sermons Preached Upon Several Occasions. Vol. II. 1634-1716 1823

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