phasis

From Late Latin phasis, or its source, Ancient Greek φάσις (phásis, “appearance”).

phasis (plural phases)

1. (obsolete) A phase (of the moon, a planet etc.). [17th–19th c.]
   • 1791, Erasmus Darwin, The Economy of Vegetation, J. Johnson, page 119:

     [A]s the same face of the moon always is turned to the earth, the lunar tides must be permanent, and if the solid parts of the moon be spherical, must always cover the phasis next to us.

2. (obsolete) Any phase or aspect of something. [17th–19th c.]
   • 1697, Marcus Manilius, translated by Thomas Creech, Astronomica:

     He o'er the seas shall love or fame pursue, / And other Months, another Phasis view […] .

   • 1882, John Stuart Mill, A System Of Logic, Ratiocinative And Inductive, 8th edition:

     In popular language Feeling is not always synonymous with State of Consciousness; being often taken more peculiarly for those states which are conceived as belonging to the sensitive, or to the emotional, phasis of our nature […] .

3. (now rare) The first appearance of the new moon. [from 19th c.]

• aspish, pissah, spahis

Borrowed from Ancient Greek φάσις (phásis, “appearance”).

phasis f (genitive phasis); third declension (New Latin)

1. phase
2. appearance

Third-declension noun (i-stem, ablative singular in -e or occasionally -ī).