[ad. medical L. collāpsus (Littré), sb. of state f. collābi to fall together: see next.]
1. The action of collapsing, or of falling or suddenly shrinking together, breaking down, giving way, etc., through external pressure or loss of rigidity or support: originally a term of physiology and medicine.
1833. A. T. Christie, Epid. Cholera, 39. The blood being withdrawn occasions a collapse or contraction of all the soft parts.
1840. R. Liston, Surgery, 507. Collapse of the lung and inflammation.
1884. Bower & Scott, De Bary’s Phaner. & Ferns, 542. The disappearance of the contents and collapse of the walls.
2. Med. a. The more or less sudden loss of vital properties and consequent prostration of an organ through exhaustion of nervous and muscular power. b. The similar failure of the action of the whole system under exhaustion or disease; general prostration of the vital powers; spec. as a stage in Asiatic cholera.
1808. Med. Jrnl., XIX. 294. The frequent repetition of their contractions necessarily brings about a collapse.
1859. J. Lang, Wand. India, 121. The body was on the very verge of collapse.
1866. Fagge, Princ. & Pract. Med., I. 292. Symptoms … followed … by the development of a very remarkable condition known as ‘Cholera Collapse.’
1875. H. C. Wood, Therap. (1879), 649. Collapse from any cause is largely dependent upon, or, more correctly speaking, largely is, vaso-motor palsy.
c. A break-down of mental energy; a sudden loss of courage, spirits, etc.
1801. W. Taylor, in Month. Mag., XI. 503. The shrinking of humility, the recoil of fear, or the collapse of disgrace.
1856. J. H. Newman, Callista, 197. He sank upon the ground in a collapse of misery.
3. Failure, ‘break-down’ (of an institution, enterprise, established condition of things).
1856. Froude, Hist. Eng. (1858), I. i. 8. A general collapse of the trade of the whole country.
1880. McCarthy, Own Times, IV. liii. 140. Filled with shame at the collapse of the enterprise.
