Learn English – Very unusual meaning of “abortion”

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The following use of the word "abortion" got my attention. It is from Graham Greene's The End of the Affair, published in 1951. Here is the context:

"…Listen. I met a man on the Common today with three legs."

"How terrible," Henry said seriously. "An abortion?"

Most definitions of "abortion" I've checked focus mostly or exclusively on the termination of pregnancy which, at least in North America, is the most common meaning. There are a few definitions given which appear to correspond to Henry's use:

Merriam-Webster: MONSTROSITY (http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/abortion)

Oxford Dictionaries: "2 an object or undertaking that is unpleasant or badly made or carried out."

And way down on this page on Dictionary.com: "6. a person or thing that is deformed"

But otherwise, as far as I can tell from the etymologies on the above links, and from this question, it looks as though the the word abortion has always referred to the early end to a pregnancy.

My question is, was Greene's usage ever common? I can't very well search Google Ngrams since it would be impossible to differentiate the intended meanings. Would a British reader in 1951 have made any association at all with an early termination to a pregnancy, when reading the exchange above?

Best Answer

Interesting :) But you can imagine that monstrosity is an extrapolation of the primary baby, miscarriage, blood and death definition. You actually can use Ngrams for this by searching for the term along with an appropriate adverb. In this case, I made an educated guess and searched for something along the lines of hideous abortion, ugly abortion and similar. As you have noted, the frequency of usage has petered out in the last few decades, albeit, not down to zero :) The graph also indicates that it was still being used with relative regularity in the '50s.

A few examples excerpted from the results:

From A sack of shakings by Frank Thomas Bullen, 1901:

She was everything that the Harbinger was not — an ugly abortion that the sea hated. When I first saw her (after I had shipped), I asked the cook whether she wasn't a razeed steamboat — I had almost said an adapted loco-boiler.

From The French Revolution: The Bastille by Thomas Carlyle, 1911:

Miserable man ! thou " hast done evil as thou couldst " : thy whole existence seems one hideous abortion and mistake of Nature ; the use and meaning of thee not yet known.

and via Wiktionary, from Pictures of Italy, Chapter 10, by Charles Dickens, 1846:

Insomuch that I do honestly believe, there can be no place in the world, where such intolerable abortions, begotten of the sculptor’s chisel, are to be found in such profusion, as in Rome.

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