Metabolism
name, noun ·Moderate ·College level
Definitions
- 1 The chemical processes that occur within a living organism in order to maintain life. countable, uncountable
"The metabolisms of aerobic bacteria require oxygen"
- 2 the organic processes (in a cell or organism) that are necessary for life wordnet
- 3 The rate at which these processes occur for a given organism broadly, countable, uncountable
"Small animals have a much higher metabolism than large animals because they lose more body heat"
- 4 the marked and rapid transformation of a larva into an adult that occurs in some animals wordnet
- 5 The processes that maintain any dynamic system. broadly, countable, figuratively, uncountable
"The results of this generalized speedup of the corporate metabolism are multiple: shorter product life cycles, more leasing and renting, more frequent buying and selling, more ephemeral consumption patterns, […]"
- 1 A post-war Japanese architectural movement that fused ideas about architectural megastructures with those of organic biological growth.
Example
More examples""My metabolism is such that no matter how much I eat I don't put on weight." "Just now, this second, you've made enemies of people throughout the world.""
Etymology
From Ancient Greek μεταβολή (metabolḗ, “change”) + -ism, from μεταβάλλω (metabállō, “to change, to alter”) + -η (-ē, action noun suffix).
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Data sourced from Wiktionary, WordNet, CMU, and other open linguistic databases. Updated March 2026.