Abortion

Part of speech: noun

Pronunciation: /əˈbɔɹ.ʃn̩/

Definitions

1. The deliberate termination of a pregnancy before the fetus can survive independently
2. The intentional ending of pregnancy before fetal viability, or the failure of a plan or mission to reach completion
3. Premature termination of either a developing pregnancy or an undertaking before its intended conclusion

Etymology: The most surprising thing about "abortion" is that its original sense was not medical at all. The Latin root "aborior" meant "to miscarry" or, more literally, to go wrong in the birthing process, and the noun built from it, "abortiōnem," carried that same plain sense of a birth that failed. The word meant a premature or failed delivery, and the idea of deliberately ending a pregnancy came later as a narrower use of the same term. The English word is a compound of "abort" and the suffix "-ion," which turns a verb into a noun of action or result. "Abort" itself came into English from the same Latin verb, so the two words share a stem and a shared history of meaning something failing to come to term. The sense of a plan or mission failing to reach completion grew out of that same image of something that never fully arrived. Before "abortion" took hold, English used the Old English "ǣwyrp," which literally meant "throwing out" or "rejection." That native word was displaced by the Latin borrowing, so the modern term replaced an older, more physical image of casting something away with one centred on failure to develop.

Synonyms: termination, miscarriage, induced abortion

Antonyms: birth, delivery