Definitions

from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 5th Edition.

  • noun Philosophy The substance, essence, or underlying reality.
  • noun Any of the persons of the Trinity.
  • noun The essential person of Jesus in which his human and divine natures are united.
  • noun Something that has been hypostatized.
  • noun A settling of solid particles in a fluid.
  • noun Something that settles to the bottom of a fluid; sediment.
  • noun Medicine The settling of blood in the lower part of an organ or the body as a result of decreased blood flow.
  • noun Genetics A condition in which the action of one gene is concealed or suppressed by the action of an allele of a different gene that affects the same part or biochemical process in an organism.

from The Century Dictionary.

  • noun That which underlies something else; that which forms the basis of something; foundation; support.
  • noun In theology, a person of the Trinity; one of the three real and distinct subsistences in the one undivided substance or essence of God.
  • noun In metaphysics, a substantial mode by which the existence of a substantial nature is determined to subsist by itself and be in communicable; subsistence.
  • noun A hypothetical substance; a phenomenon or state of things spoken and thought of as if it were a substance.
  • noun Principle: a term applied by the alchemists to mercury, sulphur, and salt, in accordance with their” doctrine that these were the three principles of all material bodies.
  • noun In medicine: A sediment, as of the urine; any morbid deposition in the body.
  • noun An overfullness of blood-vessels caused by a dependent position, as of the veins of the legs (varicose veins), etc.; hypostatic congestion. Also hypostasy.

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

  • noun That which forms the basis of anything; underlying principle; a concept or mental entity conceived or treated as an existing being or thing.
  • noun (Theol.) Substance; subsistence; essence; person; personality; -- used by the early theologians to denote any one of the three subdivisions of the Godhead, the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.
  • noun Principle; an element; -- used by the alchemists in speaking of salt, sulphur, and mercury, which they considered as the three principles of all material bodies.
  • noun (Med.) That which is deposited at the bottom of a fluid; sediment.

from WordNet 3.0 Copyright 2006 by Princeton University. All rights reserved.

  • noun the suppression of a gene by the effect of an unrelated gene
  • noun the accumulation of blood in an organ
  • noun any of the three persons of the Godhead constituting the Trinity especially the person of Christ in which divine and human natures are united
  • noun (metaphysics) essential nature or underlying reality

Etymologies

from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 4th Edition

[Late Latin, from Greek hupostasis : hupo-, hypo- + stasis, a standing; see stā- in Indo-European roots.]

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License

From ecclesiastical Latin hypostasis, from Ancient Greek ὑπόστασις ("sediment, foundation; substance, existence, essence"), from ὑπό + στάσις ("standing").

Support

Help support Wordnik (and make this page ad-free) by adopting the word hypostasis.

Examples

  • For this reason he understood the term hypostasis/substance not in the objective sense (of a reality present within us), but in the subjective sense, as an expression of an interior attitude, and so, naturally, he also had to understand the term argumentum as a disposition of the subject.

    Latest Articles 2009

  • For the Fathers and for the theologians of the Middle Ages, it was clear that the Greek word hypostasis was to be rendered in Latin with the term substantia.

    Latest Articles 2009

  • I wonder if Logos and Wisdom are more on the divine side of the ledger and if we can use the word hypostasis?

    Five Primary Sources That SHOULD Influence Richard Bauckham James F. McGrath 2009

  • On the other hand their word hypostasis, from hypo-histemi, was taken to correspond to the Latin substantia, from sub-stare.

    The Catholic Encyclopedia, Volume 11: New Mexico-Philip 1840-1916 1913

  • That Nestorius cannot, on the contrary, have taken nature to mean the same as hypostasis and both to mean essence is obvious enough, for three plain reasons: first, he cannot have meant anything so absolutely opposed to the meaning given to the word hypostasis by the Monophysites; secondly, if he meant nature by hypostasis he had no word at all left for

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

  • It is urged by Bethune-Baker that Nestorius and his friends took the word hypostasis in the sense of nature, and by Lebon that the

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

  • Basil is anxious to show that his own view is identical with the Nicene, and does not admit a development and variation in the meaning of the word hypostasis; but on comparing such a passage as that in Athan. c.

    NPNF2-08. Basil: Letters and Select Works 1895

  • [2043] The simpler explanation of the use of the word hypostasis in the passage under discussion is that it has the earlier sense, equivalent to ousia.cf. Athan.,

    NPNF2-08. Basil: Letters and Select Works 1895

  • But more importantly, the reason Augustine is careful about the word 'person' in V.9 is not that he is in doubt about whether there are persons in God, but the purely historical fact that 'persona' as the Latin term had to be recruited from a meaning that didn't exactly fit the Greek word 'hypostasis'; he points out the well-known fact that "three hypostaseis in one ousia" sounds very confusing to Latin ears, because the natural way to translate this would be "three substantiae in one essentia," which is not what the Latins would say because they would tend to regard "substantia" and "essentia" as synonyms.

    Archive 2005-02-01 2005

  • But more importantly, the reason Augustine is careful about the word 'person' in V.9 is not that he is in doubt about whether there are persons in God, but the purely historical fact that 'persona' as the Latin term had to be recruited from a meaning that didn't exactly fit the Greek word 'hypostasis'; he points out the well-known fact that "three hypostaseis in one ousia" sounds very confusing to Latin ears, because the natural way to translate this would be "three substantiae in one essentia," which is not what the Latins would say because they would tend to regard "substantia" and "essentia" as synonyms.

    Faith and Philosophy 2005

Comments

Log in or sign up to get involved in the conversation. It's quick and easy.