What does "cyanobacterium" mean?

Any of very many photosynthetic prokaryotic microorganisms, of phylum Cyanobacteria.

What is a synonym for "cyanobacterium"?

Common synonyms include: blue green alga, blue-green alga, blue-green bacterium, cyanoprokaryote.

Cyanobacterium

noun

noun ·Rare ·Advanced level

Definitions

Noun

1
Any of very many photosynthetic prokaryotic microorganisms, of phylum Cyanobacteria.
"At some point in the first billion years of life, cyanobacteria, or blue-green algae, learned to tap into a freely available resource – the hydrogen that exists in spectacular abundance in water."

Synonyms

All synonyms

blue green alga blue-green alga blue-green bacterium cyanoprokaryote

Example

More examples

"At some point in the first billion years of life, cyanobacteria, or blue-green algae, learned to tap into a freely available resource – the hydrogen that exists in spectacular abundance in water."

Etymology

From cyano- + bacterium.

Related phrases

blue green alga

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Data sourced from Wiktionary, WordNet, CMU, and other open linguistic databases. Updated March 2026.