☼ Concept Map

''atrophy'' ▫ᴱᴺ Entries

↩ 🔳 🔳 🔳

Primary

⁀➴

''atrophy'' ▫ᴱᴺ｜Definition｜1st｜20260331180822-00-⌔

atrophy - Wiktionary, the free dictionary

English

Noun

atrophy (countable and uncountable, plural atrophies)

  • (pathology) A reduction in the functionality of an organ caused by disease, injury or lack of use. [from early 17th c.]
    • ✤ Now that chatbots are going the way of Google—moving from the miraculous to the taken-for-granted—the anxiety has shifted, too, from apocalypse to atrophy. Teachers, especially, say they’re beginning to see the rot. The term for it is unlovely but not inapt: de-skilling.1

Verb

atrophy (third-person singular simple present atrophies, present participle atrophying, simple past and past participle atrophied)

  • (intransitive) To wither or waste away. [from early 18th c.]
    • ✤ Boy. I love summer vacation. I can feel my brain beginning to atrophy already.2
    • ✤ The M10 highway looks normal enough at the southern limits of St. Petersburg, but then, with a jolt, it begins to atrophy. For the next 430 miles the surface of the highway, while paved, varies from corduroy to jaw-rattling patchwork.3
  • (transitive) To cause to waste away or become abortive; to starve or weaken.
    • ✤ Cold silence has a tendency to atrophy any sense of compassion4

Etymology

Borrowed from French atrophie, from Latin atrophia, from Ancient Greek ἀτροφία (atrophía, “a wasting away”), from ἄτροφος (átrophos, “ill-fed, un-nourished”), from ἀ- (a-, “not”) + τροφή (trophḗ, “nourishment”), from τρέφω (tréphō, “to fatten”). Equivalent to a- +‎ -trophy.

Pronunciation

  • (Received Pronunciation, General American, Canada, Australian) IPA: /ˈæt.ɹə.fi/
    • Audio (Southern England): 🔊
  • (New Zealand) IPA: /ˈɛt.ɹə.fi/

Printed 2026-06-28.

(echo:: @ ⌗)

Footnotes

  1. 2025 October 26, Kwame Anthony Appiah, “The Age of De-Skilling”, in The Atlantic ‎: ↩

  2. 1987 June 13, Bill Watterson, Calvin & Hobbes (comic): ↩

  3. 2013 October 13, Ellen Barry, “The Russia Left Behind: A journey through a heartland on the slow road to ruin”, in The New York Times ‎: ↩

  4. 2001, “Schism” (04:34-05:10 from the start), in Lateralus, performed by Tool: ↩

Link to original

Secondary

• • •