hypostasis

noun

1. (archaic, countable, uncountable)A sedimentary deposit, especially in urine.

   “Phi[sitian]. I view’d your vrine, and the Hipoſtates ^([sic – meaning Hipoſtaſis]) / Thick and obſcure doth make your danger great, […]”

   “Thus the kidneys also have their particular excrement which is contained in it and is the hypostasis (deposit).”

2. (countable, uncountable)The essential person, specifically the single person of Christ (as distinguished from his two ‘natures’, human and divine), or of the three ‘persons’ of the Trinity (sharing a single ‘essence’).

   “the hypostases of Father, Son, and Holy Spirit”

   “What did the God who hammered the universe together have to do with virtue, redemption, the strange doctrine of hypostasis?”

   “As Gregory of Nyssa had explained, the three hypostases of Father, Son, and Spirit were not objective facts but simply “terms that we use” to express the way in which the “unnameable and unspeakable” divine nature (ousia) adapts itself to the limitations of our human minds.”

   “As a result of this verbal pact, the Trinity consists of three equal hypostaseis in one ousia: three equal Persons (Father, Son, Holy Spirit) sharing one Essence or Substance (Trinity or Godhead).”

3. (countable, uncountable)The underlying reality or substance of something.

   “Rašnu, the "Judge", appears to be the hypostasis of the idea embodied in the common noun rašnu, "judging, one who judges".”

   “The One, Intellect and Soul, then, are the three transcendent sources – or hypostases – of existence.”

   “as far as we know, Porphyry did not consider the divine intellect to be a hypostasis clearly distinct from the Soul, but he often designated it ‘hypercosmic soul’.”

4. (countable, uncountable)The underlying reality or substance of something.
5. (countable, uncountable)The underlying reality or substance of something.
6. (countable, uncountable)The effect of one gene preventing another from expressing.

   “When penetrance is suppressed altogether, the term ‘epistasis’ (and ‘hypostasis’ of the suppressed gene) is used.”

7. (countable, uncountable)Postmortem lividity; livor mortis; suggillation.

   “I am, of course, excluding the hypostasis produced by his having lain a whole week face downward in the cellar. That, naturally, is all in the front part of the body.”