Definitions

from The Century Dictionary.

  • Resembling closely an ordinary green plant in mode of nutrition: said of an animal, as an infusorian: correlated with saprophytic, and opposed to holozoic.
  • In botany, having the character of a complete plant in point of nutrition; autotrophic: said of ordinary green plants as opposed to parasites and saprophytes.

from the GNU version of the Collaborative International Dictionary of English.

  • adjective Wholly or distinctively vegetable.
  • adjective that form of nutrition, characteristic of vegetable organisms, in which carbonic acid, ammonia, and nitrates are absorbed as food, in distinction from the animal mode of nutrition, by the ingestion of albuminous matter.

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License.

  • adjective biology That can obtain nutrition without the ingestion of food

from WordNet 3.0 Copyright 2006 by Princeton University. All rights reserved.

  • adjective obtaining nourishment as green plants do

Etymologies

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License

holo- + -phytic

Support

Help support Wordnik (and make this page ad-free) by adopting the word holophytic.

Examples

    Sorry, no example sentences found.

Comments

Log in or sign up to get involved in the conversation. It's quick and easy.