different between miscarry vs abortion

English

Etymology

From Middle English miscarien, equivalent to mis- +? carry.

Pronunciation

• (US, UK) IPA^(key): /?m?s?kæ?i/
• Rhymes: -æ?i

Verb

miscarry (third-person singular simple present miscarries, present participle miscarrying, simple past and past participle miscarried)

1. (obsolete) To have an unfortunate accident of some kind; to be killed, or come to harm. [14th-18th c.]
2. (now rare) To go astray; to do something wrong. [from 14th c.]
3. To have a miscarriage; to abort a foetus, usually without intent to do so. [from 16th c.]
4. To fail to achieve some purpose; to be unsuccessful, to go wrong (of a business, project etc.). [from 16th c.]
5. Of a letter etc.: to fail to reach its intended recipient. [from 16th c.]
   • 1598, William Shakespeare, Love's Labour's Lost

     Sir Nathaniel, this Biron is one of the votaries with the king; and here he hath framed a letter to a sequent of the stranger queen's, which accidentally, or by the way of progression, hath miscarried.

   • 1817, Walter Scott, Rob Roy, II.1:

     It likewise alluded to several letters—which, it appeared to me, must have miscarried or been intercepted [...].

Derived terms

• miscarriage

Translations

English

Etymology

From Latin aborti?nem (“miscarriage, abortion”), from aborior (“to miscarry”). Equivalent to abort +? -ion. Displaced earlier Middle English abort (“abortion”), from the same Latin origin.

Pronunciation

• (US) IPA^(key): /??b??.?n?/, enPR: ??bôrsh?n
• Rhymes: -??(?)??n

Noun

abortion (countable and uncountable, plural abortions)

1. (medicine) The expulsion from the womb of a foetus or embryo before it is fully developed, with loss of the foetus; either naturally as a spontaneous abortion (now usually called a miscarriage), or deliberately as an induced abortion. [from 16th c.]
   • 1809, William Nicholson, The British Encyclopaedia, vol IV:

     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.

   • 2017, Ben Jacobs, The Guardian, 5 October:

     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.

2. (now rare) An aborted foetus; an abortus. [from 16th c.]
   • 1791, James Boswell, Life of Johnson, Oxford 2008, p. 657:

     ‘It seems too hairy for an abortion, and too small for a mature birth.’

   • 1929, Virginia Woolf, A Room of One's Own:

     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.

3. (figuratively) A misshapen person or thing; a monstrosity. [from 16th c.]
4. (figuratively) Failure or abandonment of a project, promise, goal etc. [from 17th c.]
5. (biology) Arrest of development of any organ, so that it remains an imperfect formation or is absorbed. [from 18th c.]
6. The cessation of an illness or disease at a very early stage.

Synonyms

• abort (obsolete), abortus
• (induced abortion): aborticide, feticide, foeticide, termination (of pregnancy)
• (act of terminating pregnancy): aborticide, embryoctony, feticide, foeticide, termination (of pregnancy)
• (spontaneous abortion): miscarriage, misbirth

Derived terms

Translations

Further reading

• abortion on Wikipedia.Wikipedia

Anagrams

• boration, orbation, rainboot