What is "apheresis"

Apheresis \A*pher"e*sis\ (?; 277), n. [L. aphaeresis, Gr. ?, fr. ? to take away; ? + ? to take.]

1. (Gram.) The dropping of a letter or syllable from the beginning of a word; e. g., cute for acute.

2. (Surg.) An operation by which any part is separated from the rest. [Obs.]
   --Dunglison. [1913 Webster] ||

n. 1 (context linguistics prosody English) elision, suppression, or complete loss of a letter or sound (syllable) from the beginning of a word, such as the development of (term special) from (term especial); procope. 2 (context medicine specific still current English) The removal of blood from a patient, and the removal of certain components (such as platelets) from that blood, followed by the transfusion of the filtered blood back to the donor (patient). 3 (context medicine general obsolete English) extirpation or extraction of a superfluity (especially a pathological one) from the body, especially blood.

1. n. (linguistics) omission at the beginning of a word as in `coon' for `raccoon' or `till' for `until' [syn: aphaeresis]

2. a procedure in which blood is drawn and separated into its components by dialysis; some are retained and the rest are returned to the donor by transfusion [syn: pheresis]

Apheresis (ἀφαίρεσις (aphairesis, "a taking away")) is a medical technology in which the blood of a donor or patient is passed through an apparatus that separates out one particular constituent and returns the remainder to the circulation. It is thus an extracorporeal therapy.

In phonetics, apheresis (; ) is the loss of one or more sounds from the beginning of a word, especially the loss of an unstressed vowel, thus producing a new form called an aphetism .