apse

• (UK) IPA^(key): /æps/

• Audio (Southern England):

  (file)

• Rhymes: -æps
• Homophone: apps

From Latin apsis, hapsis, from Ancient Greek ἁψίς (hapsís, “arch, vault”), from ἅπτω (háptō, “I bind, join”).

apse (plural apses or apsides)

2. (architecture) The rounded east end of a church that contains or is behind the altar.

   Synonyms: apsis, apside

   Holonyms: church, cathedral

   Meronyms: ambulatory, apse chapels

   Near-synonyms: chancel, presbytery, sanctuary (all broadly synonymous)

   Our private tour of the cathedral even allowed us to walk through the apse, which most tours don't.

   • 1960, Leo Steinberg, San Carlo Alle Quattro Fontane: A Study in Multiple Form and Architectural Symbolism:

     The draughtsman could not have held the sheet with the apse at the tip, for then, instead of shading away from the edge, most of his hatched lines would begin in the uncharted middle ground of a shadeable area, to strike against the contour; […]

   2. (strictest sense) The interior portion of this section of the church building, excluding the ambulatory and any apse chapels.

      Comeronyms: ambulatory, apse chapels

4. A semicircular projection from any building that is similar to a church's apse.

   The college has an apse that once held a small chapel.

6. The bishop's seat or throne in ancient churches.

   Coordinate term: see (his seat in the sense of his episcopal office)

8. A reliquary: a case in which the relics of saints are kept.
10. (astronomy) Obsolete form of apsis (“the nearest and furthest points to the centre of gravitational attraction for a body in orbit”).

    Synonyms: apsis, apside

apse (plural apses)

1. (obsolete or dialectal) An aspen tree.

• pase, SEPA, Peas, Paes, PEAs, spae, peas, APEs, Sepa, EAPs, EPAs, apes, PESA

From Proto-Baltic *apse, from Proto-Indo-European *apsā, from *(H)osp-, already the name of the same tree.

Cognates include Lithuanian ẽpušė, dialectal ãpušė, apušė̃, Old Prussian abse, Proto-Slavic *o(p)sa (Russian оси́на (osína), Ukrainian оси́на (osýna), Belarusian асі́на (asína), all from earlier *o(p)sina, Bulgarian оси́ка (osíka), Czech dialectal and Polish osa, osina), Old High German aspa, Middle High German aspe, German Espe, Old Norse ǫsp, English asp, Swedish asp.^[1]

• IPA^(key): [apsɛ]

• Audio:

  (file)

apse f (5th declension)

1. aspen tree (esp. Populus tremula)

   apses koksne ― aspen wood

   smaržīgā apse ― fragrant aspen

   ātraudzīgā apse ― fast-growing aspen

   trīc kā apšu lapa ― (s/he) trembles like an aspen leaf

• apsājs (“aspen forest”)

• pase

Borrowed from French abcès, from Latin abscessus.

• IPA^(key): /ap.se/
• Hyphenation: ap‧se

apse (definite accusative apseyi, plural apseler)

1. (pathology) abscess

• “apse”, in Turkish dictionaries, Türk Dil Kurumu
• Ayverdi, İlhan (2010), “apse”, in Misalli Büyük Türkçe Sözlük, a reviewed and expanded single-volume edition, Istanbul: Kubbealtı Neşriyatı