Hypoplasia

noun

noun ·Rare ·Advanced level

Definitions

Noun
  1. 1
    Underdevelopment or incomplete development of a tissue or organ, especially when caused by an inadequate or below-normal number of cells. countable, uncountable

    "1995, William M. Thurlbeck, 2. Lung Growth and Development, William M. Thurlbeck, Andrew Churg (editors), 2nd edition, Thieme Medical Publishers, Pathology of the Lung, page 56, Since the renal system and the lung develop at the same time, there has been repeated speculation that pulmonary hypoplasia and renal anomalies may be linked by a common developmental defect."

  2. 2
    underdevelopment of an organ because of a decrease in the number of cells wordnet

Synonyms

All synonyms
hypoplasticityhypoplasty

Example

More examples

"1995, William M. Thurlbeck, 2. Lung Growth and Development, William M. Thurlbeck, Andrew Churg (editors), 2nd edition, Thieme Medical Publishers, Pathology of the Lung, page 56, Since the renal system and the lung develop at the same time, there has been repeated speculation that pulmonary hypoplasia and renal anomalies may be linked by a common developmental defect."

Etymology

From hypo- + -plasia.

Related phrases

cartilage-hair hypoplasiapontocerebellar hypoplasia

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