meiosis
Valid in Scrabble
- Scrabble points
- 9
- Words With Friends
- 10
- Letters
- 7
See all 2 pronunciations Show less
Definition of meiosis
2 senses · 1 part of speech · etymology included
noun
-
(countable, rhetoric, uncountable)A figure of speech whereby something is made to seem smaller or less important than it actually is.
“I knew, with one of those secret knowledges that can exist between two people, that her suicide was a direct result of my having told her of my own attempt – I had told it with a curt meiosis that was meant to conceal depths; and she had called my bluff one final time.”
See all 2 definitions Show less
noun
-
(countable, rhetoric, uncountable)A figure of speech whereby something is made to seem smaller or less important than it actually is.
“I knew, with one of those secret knowledges that can exist between two people, that her suicide was a direct result of my having told her of my own attempt – I had told it with a curt meiosis that was meant to conceal depths; and she had called my bluff one final time.”
- (uncountable, usually)Cell division of a diploid cell into four haploid cells, which develop to produce gametes.
Definitions from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA.
Etymology
From Ancient Greek μείωσις (meíōsis, “a lessening”), from μειόω (meióō, “I lessen”), from μείων (meíōn, “less”). The biological sense was coined by British biologists John Bretland Farmer and John Edmund Sharrock Moore in 1905 as maiosis in a paper in the Quarterly Journal of Microscopic Science, with the spelling corrected on etymological grounds later that year. Doublet of miosis.
Words you can make from meiosis
48 playable · top: MIOSES (8 pts)
Best play mioses 8 points6-letter words
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16 words2-letter words
12 wordsFind your best play with meiosis
See every word you can make from a set of letters that includes meiosis, or browse word lists you can mine for high-scoring plays.