Interbreed
verb ·Rare ·Advanced level
Definitions
- 1 To breed or reproduce within an isolated community.
- 2 breed animals or plants using parents of different races and varieties wordnet
- 3 To breed or reproduce within a heterogenous community, the products of which produce hybrids. ambitransitive
"The rypes and our red grouse are identically the same bird, though disease has never been known in the former, and even interbreeding with the red grouse, to the limited extent they are ever likely to do, should do more good than harm."
Example
More examples"As a human cannot really howl like a wolf or chirp like a bird, if there were aliens, it would be unlikely that a human could speak the alien language, as the organ for speech or communication would be different, as a bird's beak is to a human mouth. There are science fiction shows that depict different alien humanoid races from different worlds, and they could interbreed, because maybe these shows assume that there was a common ancient humanoid colonization that resulted in different evolutions on different worlds. Possibly then, in such a scenario, different humanoids could speak one another's language."
Etymology
From inter- + breed.
More for "interbreed"
Data sourced from Wiktionary, WordNet, CMU, and other open linguistic databases. Updated March 2026.