crase
English
Etymology
See craze.
Verb
crase (third-person singular simple present crases, present participle crasing, simple past and past participle crased)
- (obsolete, transitive) To break in pieces; to crack.
- Chaucer
- The pot was crased.
- Chaucer
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 The imported definitions may be significantly out of date, and any more recent senses may be completely missing.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, G. & C. Merriam, 1913.)
French
Pronunciation
- IPA(key): /kʁaz/
Noun
crase f (plural crases)
- (linguistics) crasis (contraction of a vowel at the end of a word with the start of the next word)
Further reading
- “crase” in le Trésor de la langue française informatisé (The Digitized Treasury of the French Language).
Portuguese
Pronunciation
- (Brazil) IPA(key): /ˈkɾa.zi/
- (South Brazil) IPA(key): /ˈkɾa.ze/
Noun
crase f (plural crases)
- Assimilation of sounds of two identical vowels, throughout the evolution process of a language. For instance, the Old Portuguese word door (“pain”) has become, with time, the word dor (“pain”). Compare elisão: elision.
- (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
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.