noun ·Rare ·Advanced level

Definitions

Noun

1. 1
   A mass of cytoplasm that has many nuclei and an enclosing membrane but no individual cells

Synonyms

All synonyms

cellcoenocytecoenocytecytoplasmectoplasmgerm cell

Etymology

From syn- (“together”) + Ancient Greek κύτος (kútos, “vessel, cell”). Compare -cyte (“cell”).

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