metabasisn.

Etymology: < ancient Greek μετάβασις transition, change < μετα- meta- prefix + βάσις basis n., after μεταβαίνειν to pass from one state to another, to change one's place, to change the subject (in writing or speech). In sense 2 via post-classical Latin metabasis (1690 or earlier in the dictionary translated in quot. 1693 at sense 2), itself after use as a medical term in Hellenistic Greek in Galen.As a technical rhetorical term in Hellenistic Greek, first recorded in the Latin writer Rutilius Lupus (1st cent. a.d., summarizing the now lost Greek text of Gorgias (1st cent. b.c.)); the transmission into English is almost certainly owing to the use of the term (as a Greek word) in Quintilian's Inst. Oratoria (1st cent. a.d.). Compare (apparently isolated) use as a Latin word, 1524 in a British source. The use of the term in philosophy derives from Aristotle's employment of μεταβαίνειν at Analytica Posteriora 75^a38, where he disallows the use, in demonstrative proofs, of inference based on analogy or resemblance between kinds (see quot. 1976 at sense 1b); μετάβασις itself is used in Hellenistic Greek by the Epicurean philosophers, Philodemus and Sextus Empiricus, to denote inference based on analogy (and already in ancient Greek by Aristotle in the Poetics in the sense ‘reversal of fortune’).