abortion

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English

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Etymology

From Latin abortiōnem (“miscarriage, abortion”), from aborior (“to miscarry”). Equivalent to abort +‎ -ion. Displaced native Old English ǣwyrp (literally “throwing out, rejection”).

Pronunciation

Noun

abortion (countable and uncountable, plural abortions)

  2. (medicine) The expulsion from the womb of a foetus or embryo before it is fully developed, with loss of the foetus.
    1. (now uncommon in general use) A spontaneous abortion; a miscarriage.
      • 1605 [1578], Josuah, transl. Sylvester, “The Third Day of the First Week”, in Devine Weekes and Workes, translation of La Premiere Sepmaine by Guillaume de Salluste Du Bartas, lines 693–696:
        Swines-bread, so used, doth not onely speed / A tardy labour; but (without great heed) / If over it a Child-great Woman stride, / Instant abortion often doth betide.
      • 1809, William Nicholson, The British Encyclopaedia, volume IV:
        At any time after impregnation, abortion may take place: it is one of the most common complaints of pregnancy, whence it is a matter of no small consequence that every practitioner should well understand it.
    2. An induced abortion.
      Mary decided to have an abortion because she was too young to raise a baby.
      • 1997, George Carlin, Brain Droppings‎, New York: Hyperion Books, →ISBN, →LCCN, →OCLC, →OL, page 93:
        It is impossible for an abortion clinic to have a waiting list of more than nine months.
      • 2014 January 20, Didi Kirsten Tatlow, “‘She. Herself. Naked.': The Art of He Chengyao”, in The New York Times‎, →ISSN, →OCLC, archived from the original on 16 August 2023, Sinosphere‎:
        The story of Ms. He and her mother began in the early 1960s, shortly before the Cultural Revolution shook China. Her young parents, who worked in a pottery factory in Rongchang in present-day Chongqing municipality, conceived her while unmarried. “They were told by the factory, ‘Have an abortion or be fired’,” she said. They chose to keep her and were fired.
      • 2017 October 5, Ben Jacobs, The Guardian‎:
        Representative Tim Murphy of Pennsylvania will resign from Congress after claims that the anti-abortion Republican had urged a woman he was having an extramarital affair with to have an abortion.
  3. (now rare) An aborted foetus; an abortus.
    • 1791, James Boswell, Life of Johnson, Oxford, published 2008, page 657:
      ‘It seems too hairy for an abortion, and too small for a mature birth.’
    • 1929, Virginia Woolf, A Room of One's Own:
      The Fascist poem, one may fear, will be a horrid little abortion such as one sees in a glass jar in the museum of some county town.
  4. (figuratively) A misshapen person or thing; a monstrosity.
    • 1846, Charles Dickens, chapter 10, in Pictures from Italy‎:
      Insomuch that I do honestly believe, there can be no place in the world, where such intolerable abortions, begotten of the sculptor’s chisel, are to be found in such profusion, as in Rome.
    • 1889, Edward Bellamy, “To Whom This May Come”, in Harper's New Monthly Magazine, New York, page 459, column 2:
      His voice was the most pitiable abortion of a voice I had ever heard.
    • 2000, Jules, “please dont buy beacon cd”, in alt.fan.allman-brothers (Usenet):
      Dickey on his own manages to turn a simple bo diddley 1-2-3-4 into an absolute abortion of a song.
    • 2003, David Kerekes, Headpress 24: Powered by Love, page 133:
      an absolute abortion of a book
  5. (figuratively) Failure or abandonment of a project, promise, goal etc.
    • 1800 September 23, Thomas Jefferson, Letter to Dr. Benjamin Rush‎:
      The returning good sense of our country threatens abortion to their hopes, & they believe that any portion of power confided to me, will be exerted in opposition to their schemes.
    • 2013, Fakhry A. Assaad, James W. LaMoreaux, Travis Hughes, Field Methods for Geologists and Hydrogeologists, →ISBN, page 314:
      The transfer or loss of the project manager before the project is completed will result in lost continuity and delay or the abortion of the project and/or the report.
    • 2015, Gabriele Brandstetter, Poetics of Dance: Body, Image, and Space, →ISBN, page 73:
      […] the abrupt abortion of the trip after eleven days.
  6. (biology) Arrest of development of any organ, so that it remains an imperfect formation or is absorbed.
  7. The cessation of an illness or disease at a very early stage.

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