Standard Lemma guide
Definitions and examples are grouped by meaning. Pronunciation, history, word forms, translations, descendants, synonyms, antonyms, derived terms, and related words appear whenever the source provides them.
Sound
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noun
A figure of speech whereby something is made to seem smaller or less important than it actually is.
Definition source: English Wiktionary via Wiktextract
Usage: countable, rhetoric, uncountable
No example sentence was provided for this meaning.
Synonyms: understatement
Antonyms: hyperbole, overstatement, exaggeration, auxesis
noun
Cell division of a diploid cell into four haploid cells, which develop to produce gametes.
Definition source: English Wiktionary via Wiktextract
Usage: uncountable, usually
Topics: biology, cytology, medicine, natural-sciences, sciences
No example sentence was provided for this meaning.
Synonyms: reduction division
Antonyms: none provided
noun
understatement for rhetorical effect (especially when expressing an affirmative by negating its contrary)
Definition source: Princeton WordNet 3.0
Synonyms: litotes
Antonyms: none provided
Broader terms: understatement, rhetorical device
noun
(genetics) cell division that produces reproductive cells in sexually reproducing organisms; the nucleus divides into four nuclei each containing half the chromosome number (leading to gametes in animals and spores in plants)
Definition source: Princeton WordNet 3.0
No example sentence was provided for this meaning.
Synonyms: miosis, reduction division
Antonyms: none provided
Broader terms: cell division, cellular division
Narrower terms: nondisjunction
History
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.
Across languages
44 source translations are retained for this English entry.
