fetus

• foetus (UK)
• fœtus (UK, rare)
• phoetus, phœtus, faetus, fætus (all obsolete)

Learned borrowing from Latin fētus (“offspring”). Doublet of fawn.

• IPA^(key): /ˈfiːtəs/

• Audio (Southern England)

  (file)

• Rhymes: -iːtəs

fetus (plural fetuses or fetus or (hypercorrect) feti or (misconstructed) fetii) (American spelling, also Canada, Australia)

1. An unborn or unhatched vertebrate showing signs of the mature animal.
   • 1963, John W Choate, Henry A. Thiede, University of Rochester School of Medicine and Dentistry, Transcript, Volume 2

     Several feti were removed from every rats' uterus, stripped of their membranes and allowed to lie in the peritoneal cavity connected to the placenta by the umbilical cord and with the placenta still attached to the uterine wall.

2. A human embryo after the eighth week of gestation.

   The sequence is: molecules in reproductive systems, then gametes, zygotes, morulas, blastocysts, and then fetuses.

3. (archaic) A neonate
   • 1959 [1689], John Locke, chapter 6, in An Essay Concerning Human Understanding, vol. 2, New York, N.Y.: Dover Publications, Inc., page 77:

     The real essence of that or any other sort of substances, it is evident, we know not; and therefore are so undetermined in our nominal essences, which we make ourselves, that, if several men were to be asked concerning some oddly-shaped fœtus, as soon as born, whether it were a man or no, it is past doubt one should meet with different answers.

• The form fetus is the primary spelling in the United States, Canada, Australia, and in the scientific community, whereas foetus is still commonly used in the United Kingdom and some other Commonwealth nations.
• The nominative/accusative plural of fētus in Latin is fētūs with lengthened second vowel. The hypercorrect plurals feti and fetii are thus comparable to the hypercorrect plural octopi of octopus (the Ancient Greek plural of octopus is octopodes).

• fetal
• fetus fetishist
• grandfetus
• multifetus

• fetus in fetu
• fetus papyraceus

• embryo

• Health Online

• EF-Tus, UTFSE, fuets

Learned borrowing from Latin fētus. First attested in c. 1900.[1] Doublet of feda.

fetus m (invariable)

1. fetus

• fetal

• “fetus” in Diccionari de la llengua catalana, segona edició, Institut d’Estudis Catalans.
• “fetus” in Diccionari normatiu valencià, Acadèmia Valenciana de la Llengua.
• “fetus” in Diccionari català-valencià-balear, Antoni Maria Alcover and Francesc de Borja Moll, 1962.

fetus (first-person possessive fetusku, second-person possessive fetusmu, third-person possessive fetusnya)

1. foetus

• foetus

From Proto-Italic *fētos, from earlier *θētos, from Proto-Indo-European *dʰeh₁(i)-to, from Proto-Indo-European *dʰeh₁(y)-, see also Sanskrit धयति (dhayati), Avestan 𐬛𐬀𐬉𐬥𐬎 (daēnu), Old Armenian դիեմ (diem), Lithuanian žįsti and Old Church Slavonic доити (doiti).

• (Classical) IPA^(key): /ˈfeː.tus/, [ˈfeːt̪ʊs̠]
• (modern Italianate Ecclesiastical) IPA^(key): /ˈfe.tus/, [ˈfɛːt̪us]

fētus (feminine fēta, neuter fētum); first/second-declension adjective

1. pregnant, full of young
2. of one who has recently given birth, of one that has newly delivered; nursing
   • 8 CE, Ovid, Fasti 5.177–178:

     dumque petit latebrās fētae catulōsque leaenae,
     ipse fuit Libycae praeda cruenta ferae

     And while he was seeking the hiding places and the cubs of a nursing lioness, he himself became the bloodstained prey of the Libyan wild [beast].
     (See Hyas.)

3. (figuratively) fruitful, fertile, productive, teeming with, full of, big
   • 29 BCE – 19 BCE, Virgil, Aeneid 2.237–238:

     “[...] Scandit fātālis māchina mūrōs / fēta armīs.”

     “The engine of our fate climbs the walls, teeming with armed warriors.”
     (The wooden horse entering Troy will soon “give birth” to the Greek soldiers hidden in its “womb.” See also: machina.)

4. youthful, young

First/second-declension adjective.

• fēta

• “fetus”, in Charlton T. Lewis and Charles Short (1879) A Latin Dictionary, Oxford: Clarendon Press

fētus m (genitive fētūs); fourth declension

1. A bearing, birth, bringing forth.
2. Offspring, young, progeny.
3. Fruit, produce.
4. (figuratively) Growth, production.
5. (New Latin) A fetus.
   • 1842, Franciscus Arv[idus] Snellman, Dissertatio Academica Excerebrationis Fetus in Partu Legem Examinatura, Helsingforsiae: Ex officina typographica Frenckelliana, page 30:

     Postremo, comparatione inter excerebrationem fetus et sectionem caesaream ac partum praematurum artificialem facta, nobis apparuit, containdicatam esse excerebrationem: […]

     Finally, the comparison having been completed between the excerebration of the fetus, the caesarean section, and premature induced birth, excerebration has appeared to us to be contraindicated: […]

Fourth-declension noun.

• Balkan Romance:
  • Aromanian: fet, fetu
  • Romanian: făt
• Italo-Romance:
  • Italian:

    Marche: fetu ⇒ fetone, fetaccia

• Insular Romance:
  • Sardinian: fetu, etu; fedu ⇒ fedale, avedali
• Vulgar Latin: (see there for further descendants)
  • *fētiolum
  • *fētōnem
• Borrowings:
  • → Catalan: fetus
  • → English: fetus, foetus
  • → French: fœtus
  • → Galician: feto
  • → Italian: feto
  • → Occitan: fètus
  • → Portuguese: feto
  • → Spanish: feto
  • → Tunisian Arabic: فيتوس (fitus)
  • → Turkish: fetüs

• Meyer-Lübke, Wilhelm (1911) “fetus”, in Romanisches etymologisches Wörterbuch (in German), page 246

• “fetus”, in Charlton T. Lewis and Charles Short (1879) A Latin Dictionary, Oxford: Clarendon Press
• “fetus”, in Charlton T. Lewis (1891) An Elementary Latin Dictionary, New York: Harper & Brothers
• fetus in Gaffiot, Félix (1934) Dictionnaire illustré latin-français, Hachette.

Learned borrowing from Latin fētus. Doublet of făt.

fetus m (plural fetuși)

1. fetus

Borrowed from Latin foetus.

• IPA^(key): /fěːtus/
• Hyphenation: fe‧tus

fétus m (Cyrillic spelling фе́тус)

1. fetus