paralysis

Borrowed from Latin paralysis, from Ancient Greek παράλυσις (parálusis, “palsy”), from παραλύω (paralúō, “to disable on one side”). By surface analysis, para- +‎ -lysis. Doublet of palsy.

• (US) IPA^(key): /pəˈɹæləsəs/

• Audio (Southern England)

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paralysis (countable and uncountable, plural paralyses)

1. (pathology) The complete loss of voluntary control of part of a person's body, such as one or more limbs.
2. A state of being unable to act.

   The government has been in a paralysis since it lost its majority in the parliament.

   • 2023 June 30, Marina Hyde, “The tide is coming in fast on Rishi Sunak – and it’s full of sewage”, in The Guardian‎:

     Until then, the Sunak administration remains a study in ineffectuality on multiple fronts, leading Goldsmith to cite, not unreasonably, “a kind of paralysis”.

• immobility
• palsy

• paralyse/paralyze
• paralytic

• -plegia: paraplegia, quadriplegia etc.
• paresis

• “paralysis”, in Webster’s Revised Unabridged Dictionary, Springfield, Mass.: G. & C. Merriam, 1913, →OCLC.
• “paralysis”, in The Century Dictionary […], New York, N.Y.: The Century Co., 1911, →OCLC.
• “paralysis”, in OneLook Dictionary Search.

Borrowed from Ancient Greek παράλυσις (parálusis, “palsy”).

• (Classical) IPA^(key): /paˈra.ly.sis/, [päˈrälʲʏs̠ɪs̠]
• (modern Italianate Ecclesiastical) IPA^(key): /paˈra.li.sis/, [päˈräːlis̬is]

paralysis f (genitive paralysis or paralyseōs or paralysios); third declension

1. paralysis, palsy

Third-declension noun (Greek-type, i-stem).

¹Found sometimes in Medieval and New Latin.

• Old French: parelisie
  • → English: palsy, paralysis
  • → Galician: perlesía, parálise

• “paralysis”, in Charlton T. Lewis and Charles Short (1879) A Latin Dictionary, Oxford: Clarendon Press
• paralysis in Gaffiot, Félix (1934) Dictionnaire illustré latin-français, Hachette.