Definitions
American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition
- n. Variant of estivation.
Wiktionary
- n. biology A state of inactivity and metabolic depression during summer: the summer version of hibernation.
- n. botany The arrangement (vernation) of the parts of a flower inside a bud; prefloration.
- n. obsolete The spending or passing of a summer.
GNU Webster's 1913
- n. (Zoöl.) The state of torpidity induced by the heat and dryness of summer, as in certain snails; -- opposed to
hibernation . - n. (Bot.) The arrangement of the petals in a flower bud, as to folding, overlapping, etc.; prefloration.
WordNet 3.0
- n. (botany) the arrangement of sepals and petals in a flower bud before it opens
- n. (zoology) cessation or slowing of activity during the summer; especially slowing of metabolism in some animals during a hot or dry period
Etymologies
- Formed from Latin aestivare, from aestus ‘heat’. (Wiktionary)
Examples
“The old man had a great deal to say about "aestivation," as he called it, in opposition, as one might say, to hibernation.”
“For example, in the case of seasonal land migration of certain salamanders, if the length of the corridor is greater than the characteristic travel capability of the salamander, then the corridor is ineffective in providing additional aestivation opportunities.”
“If all goes well (says he for whom something routinely goes wrong at least twice a week), I shall emerge from aestivation within a week, and then we shall see.”
“Do they keep adding layers to their cocoons during the entire aestivation period?”
“During aestivation in the lab, the oxygen consumption rate of Cyclorana cultripes fell significantly by 70%.”
“I have written about the aestivation of land snails during the hot and dry Mediterranean summers.”
“My only criticism of the paper is that the aestivation conditions in the lab were not clearly described, especially the ambient humidity was not reported.”
“The cocoons made by the 2 species of frogs that were the subjects of this study, Cyclorana australis and Cyclorana cultripes, during 46 and 51 days of aestivation in the laboratory, had 34 and 32-33 layers erroneously given as 51 in the abstract, see Table 1, respectively.”
“I suspect there may be other reasons for group aestivation.”
“Oncomelania snails are amphibious, and therefore environmental risk factors for japonicum schistosomiasis differ markedly from those of the other parasite species, whose intermediate hosts are strictly aquatic, even though they survive periods of drought for periods up to twelve months, a phenomenon known as aestivation.”
Lists
These user-created lists contain the word ‘aestivation’.
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Interesting words
A list of words that are odd or words that I have looked up.
concupiscence, brize, scree, scoria, forestaff, spanaemia, valetudinarianism, distasture, pyrethrum, laudanum, gentian, bicameral and 11184 more...
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NeoVolt's Words
schadenfreude, serendipity, idiosyncrasy, loess, caducous, vagary, schematic, steeple, licentious, tangential, verisimilitude, vernacular and 385 more...
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gleaned words
found words, that haven't found their proper place yet.
juggernaut, panopticon, superfluous, verfremdung, aleatory, googlewhack, palimpsest, petrosomatoglyph, epibiont, solipsism, zugzwang, ubiquitous and 500 more...
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Arctic
cloud-berg, calf, icefall, polynya, lead, growler, icescape, pogonip, sconce, nilas, burga, aufeis and 10 more...
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Estivous for the Rest of Us
Summer words.
summer, summerize, summertime, summertide, summerhouse, summercamp, summer-fallow, summer-blooming, summer-flowering, summer-dried, summer-room, summer camp and 55 more...
Tweets
Looking for tweets for aestivation.
shadesofinsanity The opposite of hibernation. Apr 4, 2009