Metabolism

//mɪˈtab.ə.lɪz.əm// name, noun

Definitions

Proper Noun
  1. 1
    A post-war Japanese architectural movement that fused ideas about architectural megastructures with those of organic biological growth.
Noun
  1. 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. 2
    the organic processes (in a cell or organism) that are necessary for life wordnet
  3. 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. 4
    the marked and rapid transformation of a larva into an adult that occurs in some animals wordnet
  5. 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, […]"

Etymology

From Ancient Greek μεταβολή (metabolḗ, “change”) + -ism, from μεταβάλλω (metabállō, “to change, to alter”) + -η (-ē, action noun suffix).

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