necrosis
noun
Simple meaning
The localized death of living cells.
Pronunciation
Say it like this:
nuhkrohsuhsSay the bold part a little louder.
IPA pronunciation (US)
nəkˈɹoʊsəs
This word is pronounced essentially the same in American and British English, so one transcription covers both.
IPA (International Phonetic Alphabet) is a standard way of writing speech sounds.
Definition
Everyday modern meanings first, grouped by part of speech.
noun
pathology
The localized death of living cells (as from infection or the interruption of blood supply)
pathology
The localized death of cells or tissues through injury, disease, or the interruption of blood supply.
Word at a Glance
- Difficulty
- C1 · Advanced
- Frequency
- Uncommon
- Typical Use
- Neutral / general English
Word Aura™
How this word commonly comes across.
This meaning: The localized death of living cells (as from infection or the interruption of blood supply)
Used this way, necrosis is a specialist word with a clearly unfavourable pull. This is a clinical use: it belongs to medical description, where it is factual rather than emotive.
- Emotional tone
- Negative
- Formality
- Specialist/technical
- Intensity
- Moderate
- How common
- Specialized
- Connotation
- Serious and weighty
- Usage feel
- Clinical and detached
Where it naturally appears
- Medicine/healthcare
- Science
- Technical/specialist writing
Usage note
In general conversation this sense usually needs explaining — outside its field, people reach for a plainer word.
Word Aura describes common impressions, not a measurement. Tone changes with sentence, speaker, relationship and situation.
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Common Patterns and Combinations
How this word naturally appears with others.
Word Family
Related forms, grouped by how they connect.
Compound terms
Established multiword terms.
Gangrene that develops in the presence of arterial obstruction and is characterized by dryness of the dead tissue and a dark brown color.
A deadly form of gangrene usually caused by clostridium bacteria that produce toxins that cause tissue death.
A proinflammatory cytokine that is produced by white blood cells (monocytes and macrophages).
A proinflammatory cytokine that is produced by white blood cells (monocytes and macrophages).
Related Words
Connected to the same idea, not synonyms.
- infarctionnoun
- apoptosisnoun
- hemorrhagenoun
- interferonnoun
- cytokinenoun
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Dictionary data from Wiktionary via the Free Dictionary API. Simple meanings, combinations and word intelligence are built from verified reference data, no AI is used to load this page.