英和和英

発音

• IPA: /ˈæt.ɹə.fi/

名詞

atrophy (countable and uncountable, plural atrophies)

1. (pathology) A reduction in the functionality of an organ caused by disease, injury or lack of use. [from early 17th c.]
   • 2025 October 26, Kwame Anthony Appiah, “The Age of De-Skilling”, in The Atlantic‎:

     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.

派生語

動詞

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

1. (intransitive) To wither or waste away. [from early 18th c.]
   • 1987 June 13, Bill Watterson, Calvin & Hobbes (comic):

     Boy. I love summer vacation. I can feel my brain beginning to atrophy already.

   • 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:

     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.

2. (transitive) To cause to waste away or become abortive; to starve or weaken.
   • 2001, Tool, “Schism”:

     Cold silence has a tendency to atrophy any sense of compassion

反意語

• hypertrophy
• strengthen

参考

• -trophy
• hypotrophy
• decondition

Further reading

• atrophy on Wikipedia.Wikipedia