Plants & CreaturesGreek → English
Meiosis
/maɪˈoʊsɪs/noun
The cell division that halves the chromosome number to produce eggs and sperm.
The Greek roots
μείωσις
meíōsis
a lessening, diminution
Literally: “a making smaller”
Follow a root:μείωσις1 word
The story of the word
Rhetoric had the word first. μείωσις meant understatement, describing something as smaller than it is, and English used it that way from the sixteenth century. In 1905 the botanists John Farmer and John Moore took the same noun for the division that cuts a cell's chromosome count in half, which is the plainest possible use of a word meaning reduction. Mitosis, its partner, comes from a different image entirely: μίτος, a thread.
- How it travelled
- Ancient Greek → scientific coinage → English
- First recorded
- 1905
Same family
mitosismeiotic
In a sentence
Errors during meiosis are the usual source of an extra chromosome.
She drew the four daughter cells on the board and labelled each stage of meiosis.