Word of the Day Archive
Tuesday July 31, 2007
stasis \STAY-sis; STAS-is\ , noun;
plural stases \STAY-seez; STAS-eez\:
1. A state of balance, equilibrium, or stagnation.
2. Stoppage of the normal flow of a bodily fluid or semifluid.
The reality of governance was not stasis but change; institutions did not operate according to mechanical laws, they evolved organically.
-- Jerry L. Mashaw, Greed, Chaos, and Governance
By the 1960s Colombia had settled into an enforced stasis, with Marxist guerrillas in the hills and jungles (modern successors to the bandido tradition) and a central government increasingly dominated by a small group of rich, elite Bogotá families, powerless to effect change and, anyway, disinclined.
-- Mark Bowden, Killing Pablo: The Hunt for the World's Greatest Outlaw
Whether trabeated, arcuated, or suspended, a structure seeks stasis by balancing forces in tension and compression.
-- James F. O'Gorman, ABC of Architecture
Stasis comes from Greek stasis, "a standing still," from histasthai, "to stand."
Dictionary.com Entry and Pronunciation for stasis
