aphasia

noun

apha·​sia ə-ˈfā-zh(ē-)ə 

medical : loss or impairment of the power to use or comprehend words usually resulting from brain damage (as from a stroke, head injury, or infection)

Aphasia, the cruel illness resulting from a stroke, allowed Jean to understand what was said to her but prevented her from clearly replying.

—Robert Giroux

aphasic

ə-ˈfā-zik 

noun or adjective

Examples of aphasia in a Sentence

Recent Examples on the Web

Bruce retired from acting in 2022 amid an aphasia diagnosis. —Zack Sharf, Variety, 16 June 2025

The stroke left him with severe aphasia, a disorder caused by damage to the part of the brain that controls speech and language. —Sean Clancy, arkansasonline.com, 9 Jan. 2025

In 2013, Travis' stroke left him with aphasia – which is the loss of ability to understand or express speech. —Janelle Ash, FOXNews.com, 9 May 2025

The Context The actor's family publicly shared his frontotemporal dementia diagnosis in 2023 after previously revealing in March 2022 that he had been diagnosed with aphasia. —Ross Rosenfeld, MSNBC Newsweek, 23 Apr. 2025

Word History

Etymology

borrowed from French aphasie, from a- a- entry 2 + Greek phásis "utterance, statement" (from pha-, variant stem of phēmí, phánai "to say, speak" + -sis -sis) + French -ie -ia entry 1 — more at ban entry 1

Note: French aphasie was introduced by the physician Armand Trousseau (1801-67) in "De l'aphasie, maladie décrite récemment sous le nom impropre de l'aphémie," Gazette des hôpitaux civils et militaires, tome 37, issue of January 12, 1864, pp. 13-14. As is evident from the title, Trousseau preferred aphasie to the term aphémie, introduced earlier by physician and anthropologist Pierre Paul Broca (1824-80). Broca replied in defense of his coinage in a letter published in the same periodical on January 23. The controversy, with translated extracts from Gazette des hôpitaux, is summarized by John Ryalls in "Where does the term 'aphasia' come from?," Brain and Language, vol. 21 (1984), pp. 358-63. Though Trousseau's arguments are linguistically not at all sound, his choice has nonetheless prevailed.

First Known Use

1864, in the meaning defined above

Rhymes for aphasia

• aplasia
• dysplasia
• fantasia
• achalasia
• euthanasia
• hyperplasia
• hypoplasia
• metaplasia
• neoplasia
• telangiectasia

Medical Definition

aphasia

noun

apha·​sia ə-ˈfā-zh(ē-)ə 

: loss or impairment of the power to use or comprehend words usually resulting from brain damage (as from a stroke, head injury, or infection) see motor aphasia compare amusia, anarthria