Plants & CreaturesGreek → English
Mitosis
/maɪˈtoʊsɪs/noun
The division of a cell nucleus into two identical sets of chromosomes.
The Greek roots
μίτος
mítos
thread of a warp
Literally: “a threading”
Follow a root:μίτος2 words
The story of the word
Walther Flemming coined it in 1882 after watching stained salamander cells and seeing the nuclear material behave like threads pulled apart. He had already named that stainable material chromatin, from χρῶμα, colour. Meiosis, the halving division, was named in 1905 from μείωσις, a lessening. μίτος is a weaver's word, the thread the shuttle carries across the warp.
- How it travelled
- Ancient Greek → scientific coinage → English
- First recorded
- 1887
Same family
meiosismitochondrionmitotic
In a sentence
Under the lens the chromosomes lined up along the middle, halfway through mitosis.