Definition:

(1) A rhetorical term for shifting responsibility or blame, or turning an objection back against itself. Plural: metastases. Adjective: metastatic.

(2) Treating an issue as if it were of little importance; passing quickly from one point to another.

See also:

• Argument
• Argumentation
• Stasis
• Transition

Etymology:

From the Greek, "change of place"

Examples and Observations:

• Dr. Lisa Cuddy: You idiot! I was free and clear. Now he's coming and it's your fault!
  Dr. James Wilson: Since when has your failed attempt at communication through lies become my fault?
  Dr. Lisa Cuddy: Since you forgot how to keep your mouth shut! You messed it up, and now you fix it! And you're gonna keep my name out of it!
  ("Unfaithful," House M.D>, 2009)

• The Connection Between Medical and Rhetorical Metastasis
  "The movement of . . . matter around the body could be characterized . . . as a 'metastasis,' a term already found in Hippocratic discourse but also as a rhetorical term in Quintilian. In this latter sense, George Puttenham calls 'Metastasis" the 'flitting figure, or the Remoue,' and notes that 'discretion' sometimes obliges us to 'flit from one matter to another, as a thing meete to be forsaken, and another entred vpon'; and Angel Day says that 'Metastasis or Transitio' is employed as a tactic for abruptly shifting one's ground, as 'when in briefe wordes we passe from one thing to another.'"
  (Ernest B. Gilman, Plague Writing in Early Modern England. Univ. of Chicago Press, 2009)
• Metastasis in A Winter's Tale
  Hermione: You'll stay?
  Polixenes: No, madam.
  Hermione: Nay, but you will?
  Polixenes: I may not, verily.
  Hermione: Verily!
  Though you would seek to unsphere the stars with oaths,
  You put me off with limber vows: But I,
  Should yet say, "Sir, no going." Verily,
  You shall not go; a lady's verily is
  As potent as a lord's. Will you go yet?
  Force me to keep you as a prisoner,
  Not like a guest; so you shall pay your fees,
  When you depart, and save your thanks. How say you?
  My prisoner? or my guest? by your dread verily,
  One of them you shall be.
  (William Shakespeare, A Winter's Tale)

• "Notice how I use spare, oh-by-the-way language when I refer to attacking with commonplace words. The technical name for this technique of skipping over an awkward subject is metastasis. It's one of the more manipulative figures."
  (Jay Heinrichs, Thank You for Arguing: What Aristotle, Lincoln, and Homer Simpson Can Teach Us About the Art of Persuasion. Three Rivers Press, 2007)
• Crots
  "[The crot] is fundamentally an autonomous unit, characterized by the absence of any transitional devices that might relate it to preceding or subsequent crots and because of this independent and discrete nature of crots, they create a general effect of metastasis--using that term from classical rhetoric to label, as Fritz Senn recently suggested . . ., any 'rapid transition from one point of view to another.'"
  (Winston Weathers, An Alternate Style: Options in Composition. Boynton/Cook, 1980)

Pronunciation: mi-TAS-teh-sis

Also Known As: transmissio, scapegoating (definition #1)