What does "fissiparous" mean?

Factious, tending to break into pieces.

What is a synonym for "fissiparous"?

Common synonyms include: asexual, breakaway, divisive, divisive, factious, fragmenting.

Pronounced //fɪˈsɪpəɹəs//.

//fɪˈsɪpəɹəs// adj

adj ·Uncommon ·Advanced level

Adjective

1
Factious, tending to break into pieces.
"That nation, inescapably, is Germany, the largest, richest, most important, perhaps most admirable and certainly most pivotal nation in the European Union, the nation around which a flourishing Europe will always centre and the nation upon which a fissiparous Europe always risks foundering."
2
Causing division or fragmenting something.
"fissiparous tendencies"
3
Of cells that reproduce through fission, splitting into two.
"Reproduction may be divided into two main classes, namely, sexual and asexual. The latter is effected in many ways—by the formation of buds of various kinds, and by fissiparous generation, that is by spontaneous or artificial division."

Adjective

1
having separated or advocating separation from another entity or policy or attitude wordnet
2
reproducing by fission wordnet

"Trying to secede from the mainland, the fissiparous polities have been causing serious problems to the central authority."

An adaptation of New Latin fissiparus, from fissus (“split, cleft”) + pariō (“I bring forth”) by analogy with vīviparus.

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