Crasis

Pronunciation

• IPA: /ˈkɹeɪsɪs/

Origin

From Ancient Greek κρᾶσις (krāsis, "mixture").

Full definition of crasis

Noun

1. (obsolete) One's constitution; the balance of humours in a person's body.
• 1621, Robert Burton, The Anatomy of Melancholy, I.iii.1.2:Some men have peculiar symptoms, according to their temperament and crasis, which they had from the stars and those celestial influences ....
• 1759, Laurence Sterne, The Life & Opinions of Tristram Shandy, Gentleman, Penguin 2003, p. 24:This is all that ever stagger'd my faith in regard to Yorick’s extraction, who, by what I can remember of him, and by all the accounts I could ever get of him, seem'd not to have had one single drop of Danish blood in his whole crasis
2. A mixture or combination.
3. (linguistics) The contraction of a vowel or diphthong at the end of a word with a vowel or diphthong at the start of the following word.