Apheresis Definition

ə-fĕrĭ-sĭs
noun
A procedure in which blood is drawn from a donor and separated into its components, some of which are retained, such as plasma or platelets, and the remainder returned by transfusion to the donor.
American Heritage
The dropping of a letter, syllable, or phoneme at the beginning of a word (Ex.: 'cause for because)
Webster's New World
A medical procedure in which blood is taken from a donor, and some component, as the plasma or platelets, is separated from the blood cells in a centrifuge: the blood cells are then returned to the donor's circulatory system.
Webster's New World
A procedure in which blood is drawn from a donor and separated into its components, some of which are retained, such as plasma or platelets, and the remainder returned by transfusion to the donor.
American Heritage Medicine

(linguistics, prosody) Elision, suppression, or complete loss of a letter or sound (syllable) from the beginning of a word, such as the development of special from especial; procope.

Wiktionary
Synonyms:

Other Word Forms of Apheresis

Noun

Singular:
apheresis
Plural:
aphereses

Origin of Apheresis

  • From Latin aphaeresis, from Ancient Greek ἀφαίρεσις (aphairesis, “a taking away”), from ἀφαιρέειν (aphaireein) (from ἀφ- (aph-) (aph-, “aph-”, variant of ἀπό (apo, “off”, “away from”) before an aspirated vowel) + αἱρέειν (aireein, “to take”, “to snatch”)) + -σις (-sis) (-sis, suffix forming nouns of action); the grammatical sense developed in Latin.

    From Wiktionary

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