How to Pronounce Liver Metastases

Say it as LIV-er meh-TAS-tah-seez. The first part rhymes with 'give,' the second part sounds like 'meteor' but ends with 'tas,' and the last part rhymes with 'sees.' The stress falls on the second syllable of the second word: meh-TAS-tah-seez.

The third syllable gets the stress: meh-TAS-tah-seez. A common mistake is putting the stress on the first syllable (MET-ah-stah-seez) or the last syllable, but neither is correct.

Break it like this: LIV-er (2 syllables) and meh-TAS-tah-seez (4 syllables). Together that's six syllables: LIV-er meh-TAS-tah-seez.

Metastases is the plural form meaning spreading or spread cancer. When cancer cells travel from one part of the body to another, those new cancer growths in the new location are called metastases.

It comes from Greek words: 'meta' meaning 'beyond' or 'to another place' and 'stasis' meaning 'standing' or 'position.' Together, it literally means 'standing in another place,' which describes cancer moving to a new location in the body.

'Liver' identifies which organ is involved, and 'metastases' tells you the cancer didn't start there—it spread there from somewhere else. The term is saying 'spreading cancer in the liver.'

The singular form is 'metastasis' (pronounced meh-TAS-tah-sis). So one spreading cancer spot is a metastasis, and multiple spots are metastases.

Words like 'metastatic' (describing something related to spreading cancer) and 'metastasize' (the verb meaning to spread or develop metastases) share the same root. You might hear doctors say 'the cancer metastasized to the liver' or describe 'metastatic disease.'

You might hear: 'The doctor explained that the imaging showed liver metastases' or 'Liver metastases can originate from several different types of cancer.' The term simply describes cancer growths found in the liver that came from elsewhere.