metastasis
Americannoun
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metastases
plural
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Pathology.
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the transference of disease-producing organisms or of malignant or cancerous cells to other parts of the body by way of the blood or lymphatic vessels or membranous surfaces.
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the condition produced by this.
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Rhetoric. a rapid transition, as from one subject to another.
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Physics. a change in position or orbit of an elementary particle.
noun
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pathol the spreading of a disease, esp cancer cells, from one part of the body to another
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a transformation or change, as in rhetoric, from one point to another
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a rare word for metabolism
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Derived Forms
Inflected Forms
Nouns
Etymology
Origin of metastasis
First recorded in 1580–90, metastasis is from the Greek word metástasis “a changing”; see meta-, stasis
Explanation
When a doctor uses the word metastasis, it's never good news. It means an illness has spread to new parts of the body. The noun metastasis is a medical term that's most often used to describe a spreading cancer. If a patient's lung cancer spreads to his heart or to his lymph nodes, that is metastasis. It's a Greek word meaning "transference or change." In Latin, the word metastasis was at one time used to mean "a sudden transition in subjects," but ever since the 1660s, the English use has been almost entirely medical.
Vocabulary lists containing metastasis
Cell Biology - Middle School
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Cell Biology - High School
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Example Sentences
Examples are provided to illustrate real-world usage of words in context. Any opinions expressed do not reflect the views of Dictionary.com.
See Examples For:
The technology is a therapeutic vaccine, meaning it can help prevent recurrence and metastasis, but it can’t keep someone from getting melanoma in the first place.
From MarketWatch ● Aug. 20, 2026
On Wednesday the company said that a large randomized trial met its goal of preventing cancer recurrence and metastasis, though it didn’t publish the data.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Aug. 19, 2026
In cancer research, they have been found to affect processes that include cancer metastasis and anti-tumor immune responses.
From Science Daily ● Aug. 15, 2026
Chronically high IL-6 levels have also been linked to recurrence and metastasis of multiple types of cancer.
From Los Angeles Times ● Jun. 15, 2026
Clinically, the induration and fixation of the tumour suggest its epitheliomatous character, but the absence of a primary growth in the mouth or pharynx excludes its being a metastasis in the lymph glands.
From Manual of Surgery Volume Second: Extremities—Head—Neck. Sixth Edition. by Alexander Miles
Three weeks later, she learnt she actually had stage three cancer with limited metastases.
From Barron's ● Feb. 15, 2026
A major validation of this approach came from a melanoma trial that delivered results few expected: a 49% reduction in cancer recurrence and a 62% reduction in deadly distant metastases.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Nov. 5, 2025
"It shows just how well the GPS ensured that they would only work in the brain. The same strategy even worked to clear brain metastases of breast cancer."
From Science Daily ● Dec. 5, 2024
Next, they performed single cell RNA sequencing to measure gene expression in almost 100,000 cells from six metastases.
From Science Daily ● Apr. 16, 2024
Bearing in mind that in none of the other 39 cases were myelocytes demonstrated, one does not hesitate to explain their presence in the blood in this single case by the metastases in the bone-marrow.
From Histology of the Blood Normal and Pathological by W. Myers
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