Psychrotrophic
adj ·Rare ·Advanced level
Definitions
- 1 Describing microorganisms that thrive in a cold environment.
"One of the main reasons fridge temperatures are recommend to be set at 5ºC is because of listeria. Listeria is a food poisoning bacterium that is psychrotrophic – in other words it likes cold temperatures. From the growth models, we know that listeria grows nearly twice as fast at 8°C as it does at 5°C, hence the recommended 5ºC, which helps keep us safe from listeria."
Example
More examples"One of the main reasons fridge temperatures are recommend to be set at 5ºC is because of listeria. Listeria is a food poisoning bacterium that is psychrotrophic – in other words it likes cold temperatures. From the growth models, we know that listeria grows nearly twice as fast at 8°C as it does at 5°C, hence the recommended 5ºC, which helps keep us safe from listeria."
Etymology
From psychro- (“cold”) + -trophic (“growth”).
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Data sourced from Wiktionary, WordNet, CMU, and other open linguistic databases. Updated March 2026.