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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adj
Of animal behaviour: deterministic, preprogrammed.
Definition source: English Wiktionary via Wiktextract
Topics: human-sciences, philosophy, sciences
No example sentence was provided for this meaning.
Synonyms: none provided
Antonyms: antisphexish
History
From sphex (“sand wasp of Sphex or an allied genus”) + -ish (suffix meaning ‘being like, similar to, typical of’), coined by the American scientist and scholar of comparative literature Douglas Hofstadter (born 1945) in a September 1982 “Metamagical Themas” column in Scientific American, after a study of the behaviour of sphexide wasps. Sphex is derived from Ancient Greek σφήξ (sphḗx, “wasp”), either from Proto-Indo-European *bhey- (“bee”) or a Pre-Greek word.
