-phasia Also -phasic.

Speech disorder.

[Greek phanai, to speak.]

Psychologists use these terms for speech disorders that are mainly caused by brain damage. Examples are aphasia (Greek a-, not), inability, or impaired ability, to understand or produce speech; dysphasia (Greek dus-, difficult), deficiency in the generation of speech, and sometimes also in its comprehension; paraphasia (Greek para, amiss, irregular), jumbling of words and production of meaningless sentences.

Associated adjectives are formed in -phasic: aphasic, dysphasic. However, some in that ending derive instead from nouns ending in -phase, for example biphasic, having two phases, or polyphasic, consisting of or occurring in a number of separate stages.

Visit Michael Quinion’s World Wide Words site for 2000+ articles on English!

Copyright © Michael Quinion 2008–. All rights reserved. Page last updated 23 September 2008.
Your comments and suggestions on the site are very welcome.