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Meiosis
//maɪˈəʊ.sɪs// noun
Definitions
Noun
- 1 A figure of speech whereby something is made to seem smaller or less important than it actually is. countable, rhetoric, uncountable
"I knew, with one of those secret knowledges that can exist between two people, that her suicide was a direct result of my having told her of my own attempt – I had told it with a curt meiosis that was meant to conceal depths; and she had called my bluff one final time."
- 2 understatement for rhetorical effect (especially when expressing an affirmative by negating its contrary) wordnet
- 3 Cell division of a diploid cell into four haploid cells, which develop to produce gametes. uncountable, usually
- 4 (genetics) cell division that produces reproductive cells in sexually reproducing organisms; the nucleus divides into four nuclei each containing half the chromosome number (leading to gametes in animals and spores in plants) wordnet
Etymology
From Ancient Greek μείωσις (meíōsis, “a lessening”), from μειόω (meióō, “I lessen”), from μείων (meíōn, “less”). The biological sense was coined by British biologists John Bretland Farmer and John Edmund Sharrock Moore in 1905 as maiosis in a paper in the Quarterly Journal of Microscopic Science, with the spelling corrected on etymological grounds later that year. Doublet of miosis.
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