Noun: abortion
| Singular | abortion |
| Plural | abortions |
Sample Sentences
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Swines-bread, so used, doth not onely speed / A tardy labour; but (without great heed) / If over it a Child-great Woman stride, / Instant abortion often doth betide. [1605 [1578], Josuah, transl. Sylvester, “The Third Day of the First Week”, in Devine Weekes and Workes, translation of La Premiere Sepmaine by Guillaume de Salluste Du Bartas, lines 693–696:]
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At any time after impregnation, abortion may take place: it is one of the most common complaints of pregnancy, whence it is a matter of no small consequence that every practitioner should well understand it. [1809, William Nicholson, The British Encyclopaedia, volume IV:]
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Mary decided to have an abortion because she was too young to raise a baby.
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It is impossible for an abortion clinic to have a waiting list of more than nine months. [1997, George Carlin, Brain Droppings, New York: Hyperion Books, →ISBN, →LCCN, →OCLC, →OL, page 93:]
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The story of Ms. He and her mother began in the early 1960s, shortly before the Cultural Revolution shook China. Her young parents, who worked in a pottery factory in Rongchang in present-day Chongqing municipality, conceived her while unmarried. “They were told by the factory, ‘Have an abortion or be fired’,” she said. They chose to keep her and were fired. [2014 January 20, Didi Kirsten Tatlow, “‘She. Herself. Naked.': The Art of He Chengyao”, in The New York Times, →ISSN, →OCLC, archived from the original on 16 Aug 2023, Sinosphere:]
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Representative Tim Murphy of Pennsylvania will resign from Congress after claims that the anti-abortion Republican had urged a woman he was having an extramarital affair with to have an abortion. [2017 October 5, Ben Jacobs, The Guardian:]
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‘It seems too hairy for an abortion, and too small for a mature birth.’ [1791, James Boswell, Life of Johnson, Oxford, published 2008, page 657:]
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The Fascist poem, one may fear, will be a horrid little abortion such as one sees in a glass jar in the museum of some county town. [1929, Virginia Woolf, A Room of One's Own:]
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Insomuch that I do honestly believe, there can be no place in the world, where such intolerable abortions, begotten of the sculptor’s chisel, are to be found in such profusion, as in Rome. [1846, Charles Dickens, chapter 10, in Pictures from Italy:]
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His voice was the most pitiable abortion of a voice I had ever heard. [1889, Edward Bellamy, “To Whom This May Come”, in Harper's New Monthly Magazine, New York, page 459, column 2:]
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Dickey on his own manages to turn a simple bo diddley 1-2-3-4 into an absolute abortion of a song. [2000, Jules, “please dont buy beacon cd”, in alt.fan.allman-brothers (Usenet):]
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an absolute abortion of a book [2003, David Kerekes, Headpress 24: Powered by Love, page 133:]
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The returning good sense of our country threatens abortion to their hopes, & they believe that any portion of power confided to me, will be exerted in opposition to their schemes. [1800 September 23, Thomas Jefferson, Letter to Dr. Benjamin Rush^(http://memory.loc.gov/cgi-bin/query/r?ammem/mtj:@field(DOCID+@lit(tj090069))):]
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The transfer or loss of the project manager before the project is completed will result in lost continuity and delay or the abortion of the project and/or the report. [2013, Fakhry A. Assaad, James W. LaMoreaux, Travis Hughes, Field Methods for Geologists and Hydrogeologists, →ISBN, page 314:]
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[…] the abrupt abortion of the trip after eleven days. [2015, Gabriele Brandstetter, Poetics of Dance: Body, Image, and Space, →ISBN, page 73:]
Nouns inflected like abortion
soldier's woundwort,
Nicosian,
whopper,
greypate,
tactile sign language,
chronotrope,
Rosie Lee,
dissentient,
photoinactivator,
sulphonediimine,
coastal waterfall,
residuary devise,
bituminization,
nitrosonaphthol,
smṛiti,
geosphere,
backscreen,
mensuralist,
flocculate,
flocculant, etc. (List truncated at 20 nouns)
Etymology
From Latin abortiōnem (“miscarriage, abortion”), from aborior (“to miscarry”). Equivalent to abort + -ion. Displaced native Old English ǣwyrp (literally “throwing out, rejection”). See: Latin Nouns '
abortiō'.