meiosis

• maiosis (obsolete)

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.

• (Received Pronunciation) IPA^(key): /maɪˈəʊ.sɪs/
• (General American) IPA^(key): /maɪˈoʊ.sɪs/

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• Homophone: miosis
• Rhymes: -əʊsɪs

meiosis (countable and uncountable, plural meioses)

1. (countable, uncountable, rhetoric) A figure of speech whereby something is made to seem smaller or less important than it actually is.

   Synonym: understatement

   Antonyms: hyperbole, overstatement, exaggeration, auxesis

   Hyponym: litotes

   • 1965, John Fowles, The Magus:

     I knew, with one of those secret knowledges that can exist between two people, that her suicide was a direct result of my having told her of my own attempt – I had told it with a curt meiosis that was meant to conceal depths; and she had called my bluff one final time.

2. (usually uncountable, cytology) Cell division of a diploid cell into four haploid cells, which develop to produce gametes.

   Synonym: reduction division

   Antonym: mitosis

   Meronyms: prophase, metaphase, anaphase, telophase, reduction division, equation division

• meiotic
• meiotically

• meiosis (figure of speech) on Wikipedia.Wikipedia
• meiosis on Wikipedia.Wikipedia

Borrowed from Ancient Greek μείωσις (meíōsis).

• IPA^(key): /meˈjosis/ [meˈjo.sis]
• Rhymes: -osis
• Syllabification: me‧io‧sis

meiosis f (plural meiosis)

1. (biology) meiosis

• “meiosis”, in Diccionario de la lengua española, Vigésima tercera edición, Real Academia Española, 2014