Self-fertilization

noun

noun ·Rare ·Advanced level

Definitions

Noun
  1. 1
    The fertilization of a plant by itself; self-pollination, autogamy. countable, uncountable

    "In plants, the ability to recognize self from nonself plays an important role in fertilization, because self-fertilization will result in less diverse offspring than fertilization with pollen from another individual."

  2. 2
    fertilization by the union of male and female gametes from the same individual wordnet

Synonyms

All synonyms
autofecundationclose fertilizationself-fertilisation

Example

More examples

"In plants, the ability to recognize self from nonself plays an important role in fertilization, because self-fertilization will result in less diverse offspring than fertilization with pollen from another individual."

Etymology

From self- + fertilization.

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