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  1. autotomy love

Definitions

American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition

  1. n. The spontaneous casting off of a limb or other body part, such as the tail of certain lizards or the claw of a lobster, especially when the organism is injured or under attack.

Century Dictionary and Cyclopedia

  1. n. The reflex throwing off of certain parts of the body, us the rays in starfishes and the legs of some arthropods, which do not, as in fission and budding, develop into new individuals. This property may be of use to animals by enabling them to escape from their captors at the expense of only the part seized.

Wiktionary

  1. n. The spontaneous removal of a limb, tail etc, especially by some invertebrates as a self-defense mechanism.

GNU Webster's 1913

  1. n. spontaneous removal or casting off of a body part (as the tail of a lizard or claw or a lobster) especially when the organism is injured or under attack.

WordNet 3.0

  1. n. spontaneous removal or casting off of a body part (as the tail of a lizard or claw of a lobster) especially when the organism is injured or under attack

Etymologies

  1. From auto- + -tomy, after German Autotomie, French autotomie. (Wiktionary)

Examples

  • “Overriding of the molt-inducing stimulus of multiple limb autotomy in the mud crab Rhithropanopeus harrisii by parasitization with a rhizocephalan.”

    Simon & Schuster: Parasite Rex

  • “They are also odd among salamanders in that some species can drop the tail as a predator-defence mechanism (properly called caudal autotomy), and in that some species have only four toes on the hindfeet.”

    Archive 2006-06-01

  • “Slow-worms are like many other squamates in being able to drop the tail voluntarily by contracting muscles (this is known as caudal autotomy), but they do this more than is usual, with most individuals having autotomised their tails several times.”

    Archive 2006-05-01

  • “October 26, 2005 22: 46 autotomy: hey logan5, this mix is awesome, thanks for putting it up.”

    Headline: Boston inspires Robot (Music (For Robots))

  • “October 26, 2005 18: 23 autotomy: awesome mix. totally heart the out hud track, it's one of my favs. oh and nice transitioning between tracks, i didn't think it was sloppy at all.”

    Headline: Boston inspires Robot (Music (For Robots))

  • “Iguanas are also capable of loosing their tail autotomy for defense and it will regenerate.”

    Iguana Project

  • “Passive modes of defence are as many and varied as are the active; one of the strangest and most inexplicable of these is that known as spontaneous amputation, technically termed autotomy.”

    The Human Side of Animals

  • “Such is the adaptive device -- more reflex than reflective -- which is called self-mutilation or autotomy.”

    The Outline of Science, Vol. 1 (of 4) A Plain Story Simply Told

  • “Of course, autotomy wouldn't be much use if the animal didn't have regenerative abilities as well.”

    Daily Kos

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hypernyms (2)

Words that are more generic or abstract

  1. removal
  1. remotion

reverse dictionary (5)

Words that contain this word in their definition

  1. autotomous
  1. autotomize
  1. autotomic
  1. self-amputation
  1. autotomise

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Comments

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  • jmjarmstrong JM knows that autotomy is really retail therapy Jun 17, 2010

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‘autotomy’ has been looked up 1507 times, added to 9 lists, commented on 1 time, and has a Scrabble score of 13.