metabolism
/mɪˈtab.ə.lɪz.əm/
metabolism means A post-war Japanese architectural movement that fused ideas about architectural megastructures with those of organic biological growth.
metabolism is pronounced /mɪˈtab.ə.lɪz.əm/.
Why “metabolism” is a great word
The sum total of the intricate, unceasing chemical transformations that sustain a living organism, converting sustenance into energy and raw material into structure. From Ancient Greek μεταβολή (metabolḗ, “change”) + -ism, from μεταβάλλω (metabállō, “to change, to alter”), first attested in English in the biological sense c. 1845. Unlike “catabolism” (which isolates only the destructive, energy-liberating phase) or “digestion” (which confines itself to the mechanical and chemical dismantling of food in the gut), metabolism encompasses the whole living enterprise—the simultaneous construction and demolition, the molecular breathing in and out that constitutes being alive. It is the chloroplast trapping sunlight to build glucose from thin air, the slow burn of fat reserves in deep winter, and the invisible mending of a scraped knee—the silent, ceaseless exchange of matter and energy that, for a fleeting while, holds form against dissolution.
Etymology
From Ancient Greek μεταβολή (metabolḗ, “change”) + -ism, from μεταβάλλω (metabállō, “to change, to alter”) + -η (-ē, action noun suffix).
name
- A post-war Japanese architectural movement that fused ideas about architectural megastructures with those of organic biological growth.
noun
- The chemical processes that occur within a living organism in order to maintain life.e.g.“The metabolisms of aerobic bacteria require oxygen”
- The rate at which these processes occur for a given organisme.g.“Small animals have a much higher metabolism than large animals because they lose more body heat”
- The processes that maintain any dynamic system.
Definitions & examples from Wiktionary (CC BY-SA 3.0).
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