stasis

From New Latin stasis, from Ancient Greek στάσις (stásis). See the doublet stead.

• (Received Pronunciation) IPA^(key): /ˈsteɪsɪs/, /ˈstæ-/
• (General American) IPA^(key): /ˈsteɪsɪs/

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• Rhymes: -eɪsɪs
• Hyphenation: sta‧sis

stasis (usually uncountable, plural stases)

1. (pathology) A slackening or arrest of the blood current, due not to a lessening of the heart’s beat, but to some abnormal resistance of the capillary walls.
2. (figurative) Inactivity; a freezing, or state of motionlessness.

   Synonyms: stability, staticity

   Antonyms: movement, flux

   His company was sized for growth, not stasis.

   • 1976 September, Saul Bellow, Humboldt’s Gift, New York, N.Y.: Avon Books, →ISBN, page 194:

     Boredom is an instrument of social control. Power is the power to impose boredom, to command stasis, to combine this stasis with anguish.

   • 2020 August 7, Kurt Andersen, “College-Educated Professionals Are Capitalism’s Useful Idiots”, in The Atlantic‎:

     Or will Americans remain hunkered forever—as confused and anxious and paralyzed as we were before 2020—descend into digital feudalism, and retreat back into our cocoons of nostalgia and cultural stasis, providing the illusion that nothing much is changing or ever can change?

3. (science fiction) A technology allowing something to be artificially frozen in time, so that it does not age or change.
4. One of the sections of a cathisma or portion of the psalter.

• (inactivity): equilibrium

• static

• assist, sistas