Syngeresse

Part of speech: noun

Definitions

1. The squeezing out of liquid from a gel as it contracts over time ; the blending of two neighbouring vowel sounds into a single syllable in speech or verse
2. The process by which a gel shrinks and expels its fluid ; the running together of two side-by-side vowels so they count as one syllable
3. Liquid being pressed out of a jelly-like substance as it sets ; a poetic or phonetic fusion of two adjacent vowels into one beat

Etymology: Medieval theologians used "synderesis" for an innate awareness of basic moral principles, the inner faculty that tells a person that good should be done and evil avoided. The spelling "syngeresse" is an older English variant of that term. The Greek source is "synteresis," meaning "keeping together" or "preservation," but the theological sense probably rests on an error. Jerome, writing his commentary on Ezekiel around 410, seems to have used a form close to this Greek word where the sense called for "syneidesis," meaning "conscience." Later scholastic writers, including Thomas Aquinas, built a whole doctrine on the mistaken form, treating synderesis as a distinct power of the mind separate from conscience. The same letters also produced an unrelated medical and culinary term, "syneresis," the separation of liquid from a gel, as when whey weeps out of curds or cheese. That word comes from a different Greek verb, "synairesis," meaning "taking together" or "contraction," and it was coined in modern scientific usage, not in antiquity.