Definitions
from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 5th Edition.
- noun Physiology The normal rhythmically occurring relaxation and dilatation of the heart chambers, especially the ventricles, during which they fill with blood.
- noun The lengthening of a normally short syllable in Greek and Latin verse.
from The Century Dictionary.
- noun The normal rhythmical dilatation or relaxation of the heart or other blood-vessel, which alternates with systole or contraction, the two movements together constituting pulsation or beating: as, auricular diastole; ventricular diastole.
- noun The period or length of time during which a rhythmically pulsating vessel is relaxed or dilated; the time-interval which alternates with systole.
- noun In Greek grammar, a mark similar in position and shape to a comma, but originally semicircular in form, used to indicate the correct separation of words, and guard against a false division, such as might pervert the sense.
- noun In ancient prosody, lengthening or protraction of a syllable regularly short; especially, protraction of a syllable preceding a pause or taking the ictus: as
from the GNU version of the Collaborative International Dictionary of English.
- noun (Physiol.) The rhythmical expansion or dilatation of the heart and arteries; -- correlative to
systole , or contraction. - noun (Gram.) A figure by which a syllable naturally short is made long.
from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License.
- noun physiology The phase or process of
relaxation anddilation of theheart chambers, between contractions, during which they fill with blood; an instance of the process. - noun uncountable, prosody The lengthening of a vowel or syllable beyond its typical length.
from WordNet 3.0 Copyright 2006 by Princeton University. All rights reserved.
- noun the widening of the chambers of the heart between two contractions when the chambers fill with blood
Etymologies
from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 4th Edition
from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License
Support
Help support Wordnik (and make this page ad-free) by adopting the word diastole.
Examples
-
This occurs when the lower chambers of the heart -- the ventricles -- become stiff and cannot fully relax during the pumping stage called diastole, when the ventricles fill with blood.
-
Nor will they forgive us every time we escape from them -- without a trace -- on the diastole of a spasm.
Yoani Sanchez: They Don't Know Everything, My Love... They Don't Know... Yoani Sanchez 2012
-
Nor will they forgive us every time we escape from them -- without a trace -- on the diastole of a spasm.
Yoani Sanchez: They Don't Know Everything, My Love... They Don't Know... Yoani Sanchez 2012
-
Nor will they forgive us every time we escape from them -- without a trace -- on the diastole of a spasm.
Yoani Sanchez: They Don't Know Everything, My Love... They Don't Know... Yoani Sanchez 2012
-
Diastole and systole, diastole and systole, not arrhythmia.
Distracted Much? Don’t Worry, It’s A Good Thing | Lifehacker Australia 2009
-
Nor will they forgive us every time we escape from them -- without a trace -- on the diastole of a spasm.
Yoani Sanchez: They Don't Know Everything, My Love... They Don't Know... Yoani Sanchez 2012
-
Diastole and systole, diastole and systole, not arrhythmia.
Distracted Much? Don’t Worry, It’s A Good Thing | Lifehacker Australia 2009
-
In this view, all economic history is the slow heartbeat of the social organism, a vast systolic and diastole of concentrating wealth and compulsive recirculation.
Bruce Judson: Economic Inequality: The Wall Street Journal Is Just Wrong 2009
-
But he argues that the West, far from a monolithic bulwark against "diversity," is "the mongrel civilization par excellence"; the systole and diastole of contractive monoculturalism and expansive multiculturalism are its heartbeat.
-
EBT in that case is imaging during a small portion of the heart cycle, i.e. during diastole.
polymorph commented on the word diastole
Mentioned with its cousin systole in the Robinson Jeffers' poem The Great Explosion:
And no doubt it will burst again; diastole and systole: the
whole universe beats like a heart.
April 9, 2007