Chemoautotroph
noun
noun ·Rare ·Advanced level
Definitions
Noun
- 1 a simple microorganism, such as a prokaryote (bacteria and Archaea), that derives its energy from chemical processes rather than photosynthesis
- 2 An organism that depends on chemicals for its energy and principally on carbon dioxide for its carbon. wordnet
Etymology
From chemo- + autotroph, the latter from auto- (from Ancient Greek αὐτο- (auto-, “self-”)) + -troph (from Ancient Greek τροφή (trophḗ, “nourishment”)).
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Data sourced from Wiktionary, WordNet, CMU, and other open linguistic databases. Updated March 2026.