abortion
Pluralabortions
- 1Deliberate termination of a pregnancy through medicine or a medical procedure, ending the development of the embryo or fetus.
The doctor explained the options for a first-trimester abortion.
Access to legal abortion varies widely between countries.
Similartermination
Note
Here the ending is deliberate, and the usual verb is have: a woman has an abortion, as in the Guardian's 2017 report on Tim Murphy. The noun also works before another noun, as in George Carlin's "abortion clinic" in Brain Droppings (1997). It also appears in the compound anti-abortion, which labels a political position rather than a medical procedure.
- 2Spontaneous loss of a pregnancy before the fetus is developed enough to survive; a miscarriage.
The veterinarian recorded an abortion in the herd after the disease outbreak.
An untreated infection raised her risk of abortion during the second trimester.
Similarmiscarriage
Note
The medical sense closest to the word's Latin source: abortiōnem, from aborior, "to miscarry." It displaced the Old English ǣwyrp, literally "a throwing out." William Nicholson's British Encyclopaedia (1809) calls it one of the commonest complaints of pregnancy. Clinicians still say spontaneous abortion. In everyday speech, though, the bare word now suggests a deliberate termination, so miscarriage is the clearer choice.
- 3The failure or abandonment of a project, promise, or goal before it is achieved.
Like a film shoot shut down mid-production, with all the effort wasted.
Critics called the reform an abortion, abandoned halfway through with nothing to show.
The merger became an expensive abortion after months of failed negotiations.
Similarfailure, fiasco, debacle
Oppositesuccess
Note
This is the noun for calling things off, formed like abort plus -ion. It usually takes of to name what was dropped: the abortion of the project, the abrupt abortion of a trip. Thomas Jefferson, writing to Benjamin Rush in 1800, could say that returning good sense "threatens abortion to their hopes." Current use favors plain, procedural prose such as project reports and accounts of cut-short journeys.
- 4A misshapen or grossly deformed person or thing; a monstrosity.
Like a creature stitched together from mismatched parts.
The sculpture struck visitors as an abortion, all twisted limbs and broken proportions.
Critics dismissed the redesign as an abortion of mismatched styles.
Similarmonstrosity, abomination, eyesore
Note
The insult is most at home in the pattern an abortion of a ___: Edward Bellamy's "most pitiable abortion of a voice" (1889), and later "an absolute abortion of a song" and "of a book." Like a monster of a storm, the construction puts the verdict before the thing judged. Dickens's Pictures from Italy (1846) uses the plural for Rome's sculptures. It is a harsh, contemptuous word, so keep it for open scorn.
The remake was an absolute abortion of a film.
It was a sorry abortion of a speech, rambling and half finished.
- 5The expelled fetus or embryo itself, the result of a miscarriage or termination.
The physician preserved the abortion in a jar for later examination.
‘It seems too hairy for an abortion, and too small for a mature birth.’
1791, James Boswell, Life of JohnsonNote
Here the word names the thing rather than the event. Boswell's Life of Johnson (1791) judges a creature "too hairy for an abortion." Virginia Woolf, in A Room of One's Own (1929), pictures a poem as a specimen in a county-museum jar, the image that feeds the insult for a misshapen thing. The usage is archaic, and modern writing calls the specimen an abortus or simply a fetus.
- 6The expulsion of an embryo or fetus from the womb before it has fully developed, so that it does not survive.
- 7The arrested development of an organ, leaving it as an imperfect structure or causing it to be absorbed.
- 8The halting of an illness or disease at a very early stage, before it fully takes hold.
Practice
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Origin
From Latin abortiōnem ("miscarriage, abortion"), from aborior ("to miscarry"); it can be analyzed as abort plus the suffix -ion. It displaced the native Old English ǣwyrp, literally "throwing out, rejection."