[Ads-l] metastasize

[Barretts Mail]

The online Oxford Dictionaries provide only the cancer meaning for metastasize and metastasis. 

Wiktionary also talks only about cancer for the verb, but includes a figurative meaning for the noun (https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/metastasis <https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/metastasis>): The spread of a harmful event to another location, like the metastasis of a cancer.

Vox today has an article titled "He can’t pass it. He can’t abandon it. Donald Trump has walled himself in.” updated by Dara Lind (http://www.vox.com/policy-and-politics/2017/4/28/15439632/trump-wall-politics <http://www.vox.com/policy-and-politics/2017/4/28/15439632/trump-wall-politics>):

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The closer the wall comes to reality, the more intra-GOP fights will metastasize over it
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This is a sub-heading that doesn’t seem to be followed with much support. I think the following is the only substantial support provided:

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Texas Republicans, especially in the House, are cognizant of this — they’re a lot more bearish on the wall than the Trump administration. And they’d likely be joined by libertarian Republicans skeptical of the government’s legal authority to seize private land — and deficit hawks skeptical of the government’s track record on border security, which is littered with abandoned or ineffective projects to the tune of billions of dollars.
—— 

Regardless, this is surely a reasonably common meaning. Dictionary.com provides better coverage:

http://www.dictionary.com/browse/metastasize?s=t <http://www.dictionary.com/browse/metastasize?s=t>
http://www.dictionary.com/browse/metastasis?s=t <http://www.dictionary.com/browse/metastasis?s=t>

Benjamin Barrett
Formerly of Seattle, WA
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The American Dialect Society - http://www.americandialect.org