Definitions
American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition
- n. Partial or total loss of the ability to articulate ideas or comprehend spoken or written language, resulting from damage to the brain caused by injury or disease.
Century Dictionary and Cyclopedia
- n. In pathology, the impairment or abolition of the faculty of using and understanding written and spoken language, independently of any failure of the intellectual processes or any disease or paralysis of the vocal organs. Ataxic aphasia, when uncomplicated, is inability to express one's ideas in spoken words, while the patient understands perfectly what is said to him, and reads and writes. The name amnesic aphasia has been applied to cases where the patient is unable to recall the word which he wants, though able to speak it when found. Sensory aphasia is where the patient fails to comprehend spoken or written words; it comprises word-deafness and word-blindness. Aphasia, especially ataxic aphasia, seems to depend in most cases on a lesion of the inferior frontal convolution, almost always on the left side of the brain. See agraphia, alalia, alexia, anarthria, and aphonia.
Wiktionary
- n. A partial or total loss of language skills due to brain damage. Usually, damage to the left perisylvian region, including Broca's area and Wernike's area, causes aphasia.
GNU Webster's 1913
- n. Loss of the power of speech, or of the appropriate use of words, the vocal organs remaining intact, and the intelligence being preserved. It is dependent on injury or disease of the brain.
WordNet 3.0
- n. inability to use or understand language (spoken or written) because of a brain lesion
Etymologies
- Greek, from aphatos, speechless : a-, not; see a-1 + phatos, spoken, speakable (from phanai, to speak; see -phasia).
Examples
“At the story's beginning, a drug damages Rodney and makes him completely and incurably aphasiac; the only dent in the aphasia is an Ancient device which allows Rodney to do pictoral mental communication with Ancient gene carriers, just barely enough that they don't need to ship him home immediately.”
“She actually had a condition known as aphasia, which is a sort of a big term.”
“Speech aphasia is my middle name, no matter what stage of a novel I’m currently writing. * sigh*”
“But you can have certain situations where you can have one of the speech problems, something known as aphasia, present much earlier in the diagnose of Alzheimer's.”
“It is also not the same as neurogenic or “acquired stuttering” e.g. aphasia, which is associated with head injury or stroke.”
“The disease called aphasia, in which people begin by saying tea when they mean coffee, commonly ends in their silence.”
“In fact the hyoscyamus had, combined with his anxieties, given him a slight attack of what is now called aphasia, that brain disease the most striking symptom of which is that one word is mistaken for another.”
Sir Walter Scott
“Injuries like Giffords' to the left side of the brain lead to an acquired language disorder known as aphasia in one-third to one-half of patients, experts said.”
“But his latest book, Deep Field, which will be published in November, is a collection of poems explicitly about John, their complex relationship and the condition aphasia, which is stealing John's ability to communicate.”
“Still, Giffords has trouble speaking and forming sentences, a condition known as aphasia.”
Lists
These user-created lists contain the word ‘aphasia’.
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GRE Barrons Wordlist
A complete Barron's Wordlist for GRE preparation. Your online flashcard replacement.
abase, abash, abate, abbreviate, abdicate, aberrant, aberration, abet, abeyance, abhor, abject, abjure and 4084 more...
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Confusually
???????????????????
baffle, farrago, confound, befuddle, daze, disorient, discombobulate, stupefy, perplex, mystify, bewilder, boggle and 134 more...
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Lucky Waiting for Godot
A list of words and phrases as uttered forth by the character Lucky in Samuel Becket's play Waiting For Godot. Pozzo's pathetic submissive slave Lucky stands mute during the play save for his +/-50...
as uttered forth, quaquaquaqua, Fartov and Belcher, that which clings..., outside time with..., the strides of al..., wastes and pines ..., Anthropopopometry, blast hell to heaven, for reasons unknown, in the light of t..., the strides of ph... and 39 more...
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Mike Doughty/Soul Coughing
Words and phrases from his lyrics.
incumbent, jawgrind, boop shuh-nai, mopstyle, boombox moocher, Buddha-plump van, slingbacked, half-moon, maquereau, aphasia, barter yardie, boom-bap and 30 more...
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diseases that make lovely baby girl's names
usually i try to restrict this to sexually transmitted diseases, but some of the others are just so musical. Syphilis, it should be noted, would make a lovely boy's name, but that is outside the sc...
gonorrhea, chlamydia, roseola, rubella, angina, atrophy, candida, cholera, jaundice, palsy, leukemia, alopecia and 50 more...
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You Don't Say
Language disorders, disabilities, and unusual demonstrations.
aphasia, aphonia, dysarthria, glossolalia, paraphasia, apraxia, alexia, polymicrogyria, logorrhea, stutter, spoonerism, freudian slip and 22 more...
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datmaregga's list
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-phasia
denoting a type of speech disorder
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::: Things That Would Be Bad :::
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andan's list
chained_bear See also qwertial aphasia. Jul 20, 2009
epeolatrist ninja words goes into more detail regarding the brain damage part May 20, 2009
vanishedone A.k.a. WeirdNet. You haven't seen the worst of it... May 19, 2009
john StefAnne: It wasn't posted by anyone. They gray definitions next to words come from WordNet. May 19, 2009
stefanne Aphasia is not necessarily the result of a brain lesion.
And it's not "any disorder or disease of the brain," either.
Who posted this definition? May 19, 2009
obikitty I learned this word in a pysch class ages ago, but recently I ran into someone who was actually NAMED it. The poor kid. She's in for an unpleasant surprise when she looks up the meaning of her name... Oct 17, 2008
adm i know. obvious. Dec 5, 2006