crase

See also: Crase

English

Etymology

See craze.

Pronunciation

• IPA^(key): /kɹeɪz/
• Rhymes: -eɪz

Verb

crase (third-person singular simple present crases, present participle crasing, simple past and past participle crased)

1. (obsolete, transitive) To break in pieces; to crack.
   • 1387–1400, Geoffrey Chaucer, “The Tale of the Chanons Yeman”, in The Canterbury Tales, [Westminster: William Caxton, published 1478], →OCLC; republished in [William Thynne], editor, The Workes of Geffray Chaucer Newlye Printed, […], [London]: […] [Richard Grafton for] Iohn Reynes […], 1542, →OCLC:

     The pot was crased.

     (please add an English translation of this quote)

Part or all of this entry has been imported from the 1913 edition of Webster’s Dictionary, which is now free of copyright and hence in the public domain. The imported definitions may be significantly out of date, and any more recent senses may be completely missing.
(See the entry for “crase”, in Webster’s Revised Unabridged Dictionary, Springfield, Mass.: G. & C. Merriam, 1913, →OCLC.)

Anagrams

• CERAs, Cares, Ceras, Cesar, Creas, Races, SERCA, acers, acres, cares, carse, caser, ceras, e-cars, races, sacre, scare, serac, sérac

French

Pronunciation

• IPA^(key): /kʁaz/

Noun

crase f (plural crases)

1. (linguistics) crasis (contraction of a vowel at the end of a word with the start of the next word)

Further reading

• “crase”, in Trésor de la langue française informatisé [Digitized Treasury of the French Language], 2012.

Anagrams

• âcres, caser, César, créas, races, sacre, sacré, scare

Portuguese

Pronunciation

 

• (Brazil) IPA^(key): /ˈkɾa.zi/

• (Brazil) IPA^(key): /ˈkɾa.zi/
  • (Southern Brazil) IPA^(key): /ˈkɾa.ze/

• (Portugal) IPA^(key): /ˈkɾa.z(ɨ)/

• Rhymes: -azi, -azɨ
• Hyphenation: cra‧se

Noun

crase f (plural crases)

1. crasis:
   1. assimilation of sounds of two identical vowels, throughout the evolution process of a language
   2. (grammar) name given to the process of the contraction of a + a, that is, a merge (assimilation) of the Portuguese preposition a (“to, for”) + the article a (“the”)

Usage notes

• An example of diachronic crasis is the Old Galician-Portuguese word door (“pain”), which has become, with time, the word dor (“pain”). Compare elisão (“elision”).
• The article a has feminine gender in Portuguese. Accordingly, both it and the contraction à are used only before feminine words. The translation of à into English, hence, is to the. It is a common mistake for people to write "a" when they should write "à" and vice-versa.

Related terms

• crasear, craseado

See also

• à, às, ao, aos, àquele, àqueles, àquela, àquelas