Definitions

from The Century Dictionary.

  • noun In rhetoric, a passing from one thing to another; transition.
  • noun In medicine, a change, as in treatment or remedies, or of air, tissue, disease, etc. Also called metabola.

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

  • noun (Rhet.) A transition from one subject to another.
  • noun (Med.) Same as Metabola.

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

  • noun rhetoric A change from one subject to another.
  • noun pathology Any change in the course of a disease; metabola.

Etymologies

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License

From Late Latin metabasis, from Ancient Greek μετάβασις (metábasis, "a change, a transition"), from μεταβαίνω (metabaíno, "I cross"), from μετά (metá) and βαίνω (baíno, "I move"), from Proto-Indo-European *gʷem-

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Examples

  • Since such talk does not have ontological implications that require specifically different kinds of entities, the Aristotelian prohibition of metabasis does not apply.

    William of Ockham Spade, Paul Vincent 2006

  • Such an application of mathematics violates a traditional Aristotelian prohibition against metabasis eis allo genos, grounded on quite reasonable considerations.

    William of Ockham Spade, Paul Vincent 2006

  • [37] Wherever A = B, and A is not = B, are equally demonstrable, the premise in each undeniable, the induction evident, and the conclusion legitimate -- the result must be, either that contraries can both be true, (which is absurd,) or that the faculty and forms of reasoning employed are inapplicable to the subject -- i.e. that there is a metabasis eis allo genos.

    Biographia Literaria Samuel Taylor Coleridge 1803

  • Certain philosophers have, nevertheless, allowed themselves the liberty of making such a saltus (metabasis eis allo gonos).

    The Critique of Pure Reason Immanuel Kant 1764

  • "than the Caesars required to make themselves masters of the world," and in which the combatants, having spent at last their whole stock of dialectic ammunition, resorted to carnal weapons, passing suddenly, by a very illogical _metabasis_, from "universals" to particulars.

    The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 02, No. 08, June 1858 Various

  • Col.Eph. Heb.) need not yet necessarily be a [Greek: metabasis eis allo genos]; for the beginning of things [Greek: archê] and their purpose form the real force to which their origin is due (principle [Greek: archê]).

    History of Dogma, Volume 1 (of 7) Adolph Harnack 1890

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