atrophy

1. 1.

   undergo atrophy

   “Muscles that are not used will atrophy”

   Broadershrivel

Other forms of atrophy

plural

atrophies·

past tense or participle

atrophied

present participle

atrophying·

Forms marked · are formed by the regular rule rather than recorded in the source data. English keeps a few hundred irregulars and the rest follow the pattern, so the rule is right far more often than not — but it is a rule, and the mark says so.

Questions about atrophy

What does atrophy mean?

atrophy means "a decrease in size of an organ caused by disease or disuse". That is the primary sense; the word has 3 in total, listed in full on this page.

How many syllables are in atrophy?

atrophy has 3 syllables: at-ro-phy. The stress falls on "at". In IPA it is /ˈætɹəfi/.

What is another word for atrophy?

Close synonyms include wasting, wasting away, withering. Each sense on this page lists its own synonyms, because a word with several meanings rarely has one substitute that works for all of them.

Is atrophy a common word?

atrophy is banded "Uncommon" — turns up in careful writing rather than conversation. The band comes from how often the word appears in a large corpus of everyday English, not from an editor's impression.