Ptosis
noun ·Rare ·Advanced level
Definitions
- 1 The prolapse of a bodily organ, especially drooping of the eyelid or the breasts. countable, uncountable
"There were many other factors to be taken into account: Miss West’s age, the type of enlargement, whether the condition was one of pure hypertrophy, the degree of ptosis present, the actual scale of enlargement and, finally, the presence of any pathology in the breast tissue itself."
- 2 drooping of the upper eyelid caused by muscle paralysis and weakness wordnet
Example
More examples"There were many other factors to be taken into account: Miss West’s age, the type of enlargement, whether the condition was one of pure hypertrophy, the degree of ptosis present, the actual scale of enlargement and, finally, the presence of any pathology in the breast tissue itself."
Etymology
From Ancient Greek πτῶσις (ptôsis, “falling, fall”), from πίπτω (píptō, “to fall down”) + -σις (-sis, nominal suffix). First used in 1710.
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Data sourced from Wiktionary, WordNet, CMU, and other open linguistic databases. Updated March 2026.