phase
Pluralphases
Often confused with faze
Pluralphases
- 1
- 2To start or stop doing something slowly, a little at a time.
Like turning a dial up or down slowly instead of flipping a switch.
The school will phase in the new rules slowly.
We want to phase out old phones over the next year.
UsageUsed with in or out: phase in means start slowly, phase out means stop slowly.
- 3The shape of the lit-up part of the Moon or a planet as it changes over time.
Like watching a light slowly get covered and then uncovered again.
The Moon's phases change a little each night.
A full moon is the brightest phase.
UsageMost often in the phases of the moon.
Note
- 4A part of a material that is the same all through, such as ice, liquid water, or steam.
Like oil floating on water, where each layer stays its own kind.
Ice and water are two phases of the same substance.
When you boil water, it changes from a liquid phase to a gas phase.
Note
- 5One side of something: one way it looks, or one part of it you think about.
The book looks at every phase of farm life, from the work to the food.
The new coach cares about every phase of the game, not just scoring.
UsageOften every phase of something, meaning every part of it.
Note
- 6One point in the repeating motion of a wave or vibration.
Like two swings that move together or move in opposite ways.
Two waves can be at the same phase or at opposite phases.
The pendulum returns to the same phase after each full swing.
UsageWaves are in phase when their peaks line up and out of phase when they do not.
Note
Less common meanings
- 7Alternative spelling of faze. Many people see it as a mistake, so write faze instead.
Nothing seems to phase her, even really bad news.
The loud noise didn't phase the baby at all.
UsageCareful writers spell this faze: it didn't faze her (not
incorrect: it didn't phase her). - 8
- 9In a power system with several alternating currents, one of the live wires, or the current it carries.
Like several lanes on a road, each carrying its own stream of traffic.
Each phase carries part of the electric power to the building.
An electrician checked the voltage on every phase.
Note
- 10The angle that shows which direction a complex number points when you draw it as an arrow from the center.
- 11One of a species' natural color forms, unrelated to season or sex and often unrelated to age.
- 12In rugby, the run of play between one tackle pileup and the next.
- 13A kind of sound distortion that happens when high and low tones travel at different speeds.
- 14To shoot someone or something with a phaser.
- 15In genetics, which gene variants sit together on the same copy of a chromosome.
- 16To figure out which gene variants travel together on each chromosome, using known gene data.
Showing meanings only.
Practice
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Origin
The Greek root is phaínō, 'to cause to appear', which gave phásis, 'an appearance'. New Latin made that phasis, and English took the word from there.