Homoplasy

noun

noun ·Rare ·Advanced level

Definitions

Noun
  1. 1
    A correspondence between the parts or organs of different species acquired as the result of parallel evolution or convergence. countable, uncountable
  2. 2
    A correspondence between variants in different versions of texts acquired as the result of parallel evolution or convergence. countable, uncountable

Etymology

Coined by British zoologist Ray Lankester in 1870, from homo- + -plasy, formed from Ancient Greek ὁμός (homós, “similar, alike, the same”) and πλάσσω (plássō, “to shape, to mold”).

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