noun ·Rare ·Advanced level

Definitions

Noun

1. 1
   The doctrine that during embryonic development various structures develop that appeared during the evolutionary history of the species. uncountable

Synonyms

All synonyms

recapitulation theory

Etymology

From recapitulation + -ism.

Data sourced from Wiktionary, WordNet, CMU, and other open linguistic databases. Updated March 2026.