diastole
/daɪˈæstəli/ noun
Forms diastoles
- noun (chiefly uncountable, physiology) The phase or process of relaxation and dilation of the heart chambers, between contractions, during which they fill with blood; an instance of the process.
- noun (uncountable, prosody, rhetoric) The lengthening of a vowel or syllable beyond its typical length.
- noun (Greek grammar) The hypodiastole, a textual or punctuation mark formerly used to disambiguate homonyms in Greek.
Synonyms
Antonyms
Etymology
From Ancient Greek διαστολή (diastolḗ, “separation, drawing asunder”), from διά (diá, “apart”) + στέλλειν (stéllein, “send”).
Webster’s 1913
- noun The rhythmical expansion or dilatation of the heart and arteries; --correlative to systole, or contraction.
- noun A figure by which a syllable naturally short is made long.
Sources: Wiktionary · Webster’s 1913 — from the Wiktionary entry “diastole”, CC BY-SA 4.0. Details