meiosis
UK /maɪˈəʊ.sɪs/ · US /maɪˈoʊ.sɪs/ noun
Forms meioses maiosis miosis
- noun (countable, uncountable, rhetoric) A figure of speech in which something is presented as smaller or less significant than it actually appears.
- noun (usually uncountable, cytology) Cell division of a diploid cell into four haploid cells, which develop to produce gametes.
Synonyms
Antonyms
Etymology
From Ancient Greek μείωσις (meíōsis, “a lessening”), from μειόω (meióō, “I lessen”), from μείων (meíōn, “less”). The biological sense was coined by British biologists John Bretland Farmer and John Edmund Sharrock Moore in 1905 as maiosis in a paper in the Quarterly Journal of Microscopic Science, with the spelling corrected on etymological grounds later that year. Doublet of miosis.
Webster’s 1913
- noun Diminution; a species of hyperbole, representing a thing as being less than it really is.
Etymology [NL., fr. Gr. Meionite.]
Sources: Wiktionary · WordNet 3.0 · Webster’s 1913 — from the Wiktionary entry “meiosis”, CC BY-SA 4.0. Details