Hypoxic

adj

adj ·Rare ·Advanced level

Definitions

Adjective
  1. 1
    Of, pertaining to, or suffering from hypoxia.

    "Chronic obstructive pulmonary disease had left her hypoxic and wheezing."

  2. 2
    Describing a breathing gas mixture that contains less than 21% oxygen.

    "Rarely, nitrox mixtures are intentionally hypoxic, under special conditions."

  3. 3
    Exhibiting hypoxia.

    "Dead zones are hypoxic areas in the world's oceans and large lakes."

Example

More examples

"Sixty-five percent of U.S. estuaries and coastal water bodies are moderately to severely degraded by excessive nutrient inputs, which lead to algal blooms and low-oxygen (hypoxic) waters that can kill fish and seagrass and reduce essential fish habitats."

Etymology

From hypoxia + -ic or hyp- + ox- + -ic.

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