meiosis · noun — A figure of speech whereby something is made to seem smaller or less important than it actually is. It carries an Arena rating of 1402, earned across 3 head-to-head judged battles.
Definition from Wiktionary (CC BY-SA 3.0).
Among words judged in Lexicurio's Arena, meiosis ranks #2,609 of 17,195 for Most Exacting Words, #2,633 of 17,201 for Most Betrayed by Its Sound, #2,644 of 17,162 for Most Elegant Words, #2,981 of 17,130 for Most Ponderous Words.
meiosis is pronounced /maɪˈəʊ.sɪs/.
Why “meiosis” is a great word
A figure of speech involving deliberate understatement, or, in cell biology, the specialized division that yields reproductive cells with half the usual chromosomes. From Ancient Greek μείωσις (meíōsis, “a lessening”), from μειόω (meióō, “I lessen”), from μείων (meíōn, “less”); the biological sense was coined in 1905 by British biologists John Bretland Farmer and John Edmund Sharrock Moore. Unlike litotes, which understates via a negative opposite ("not unkind"), meiosis is a broader, often direct, diminishment; unlike mitosis, which faithfully duplicates cells for growth, meiosis is a reductive halving for creation. It is the dry wit that calls the Atlantic “a bit damp,” the immense tragedy “a spot of bother,” or a searing pain “a slight discomfort”—just as it is the elegant, necessary fragmentation in the gonads that trades genomic integrity for the chance of new life, a diminution that is the very precondition for love and evolution.
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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.
noun
- A figure of speech whereby something is made to seem smaller or less important than it actually is.
- Cell division of a diploid cell into four haploid cells, which develop to produce gametes.
Definitions & examples from Wiktionary (CC BY-SA 3.0).
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