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\ \ [19] Apse ‘vaulted recess in a church’ is an anglicization of Latin apsis. This was a borrowing of Greek apsís or hapsís, which meant literally ‘a fastening together’ (it was derived from the verb háptein ‘join’). The notion that underlies its application to a vaulted space seems to be the joining together of arcs to form a circle; an early Greek use was as a ‘felloe’, part of the rim of a wheel, and this later came to mean, by extension, the wheel itself. Further metaphoricization led to the sense ‘orbit’, and, more semicircularly, ‘arch’ or ‘vault’.
\ \ The Latin/Greek form apsis itself was borrowed into English at the beginning of the 17th century, and remains in use as a technical term in astronomy, ‘extreme point of an orbit’.

Word origins - 2ed. . 2005.

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  • apse — [aps] n. [L apsis, APSIS] 1. a semicircular or polygonal projection of a building, esp. one at the east end of a church, with a domed or vaulted roof 2. APSIS (sense 1) …   English World dictionary

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