Definitions
American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition
- n. A chemical secreted by an animal, especially an insect, that influences the behavior or development of others of the same species, often functioning as an attractant of the opposite sex.
Wiktionary
- n. biology A chemical secreted by an animal, especially an insect that affects the development or behavior of other members of the same species, functioning often as a means of attracting a member of the opposite sex.
WordNet 3.0
- n. a chemical substance secreted externally by some animals (especially insects) that influences the physiology or behavior of other animals of the same species
Etymologies
- From φέρω (phero, "I bring, bear, carry") and hormone. (Wiktionary)
- Greek pherein, to carry; see bher-1 in Indo-European roots + (hor)mone. (American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition)
Examples
“Scientists have long believed that queen pheromones regulate caste development in social insects, but this finding is only the second such discovery in the past 50 years - when the term pheromone was coined by scientists.”
“It is more than 50 years since the term pheromone was proposed to label a category of chemical signals produced by one member of a species that elicit a definite response in another member of the same species.”
“It is 50 years since the term pheromone was coined, but the jury is still out as to whether there are genuinely human smells which can elicit the most primitive subconscious urges in those around us.”
“This "locator pheromone" is then smelled by local mosquitoes ready to lay eggs and will attract them inside.”
“The pheromone is a scent which mosquitoes naturally release in the wild when they find a good egg laying location.”
“The word pheromone originated from the Greek language from the words pherein "I carry" and hormon "I excite.”
“I assume then that they’ve been exapted to assist in pheromone distribution (that is, the lipids evolved for waterproofing first, and then became co-opted during evolution for pheromone distribution), but I can’t determine this from Shine et al. (2002).”
“Male spiders of this south-American species incorporate a chemical known as a pheromone into their silk gift wrap.”
Telegraph.co.uk - Telegraph online, Daily Telegraph, Sunday Telegraph
“In the spirit of facilitating self-organization, oishii is a kind of pheromone trail allowing me and others to find the resources other members of the hive found useful, interesting, humorous, or for some other reason worth visiting again.”
“Non-volatile sexual "pheromone" found in mouse tears may play a role in close-range, face-to-face communication”
Nobel Prize Awarded for Discover of Bacteria that Cause Ulcers (and other science news)
Lists
These user-created lists contain the word ‘pheromone’.
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Mirrored Vowels
Rules:
• The word must have an even number of vowels.
• There must be four or more vowels; thus, at minimum, an A-A-A-A or A-B-B-A pattern.
• The vowels must appear in a mir...feminine, solicitor, caruncular, repackager, semiprimes, fetishises, decomposer, demonlover, recomposer, sepultures, lipotropic, colesterol and 385 more...
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inquiryqueue's list
words delicious to pronounce
apostrophe, asphodel, anemone, cantaloupe, cantalevered, cardamom, coriander, petrichor, sycamore, luminous, tendril, peculiar and 122 more...
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ecbrenner's list
flatline, luddism, apocalipstick, muttsucker, leviathan of fore..., flint, coryphaeus, donnybrook, bandwidth, bagpipe the mizen, cheesed off, asterism and 525 more...
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The Sog Collection
My big word list.
chaos, flaccid, empirical, flotsam, cacophony, grumble, assuage, awe, romance, mortality, coalesce, fortuitous and 3282 more...
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Cessilind's Words
dvorak, ingenuity, cessation, oblique, transverse, anvilicious, evoke, verisimilitude, integrity, strega, recumbent, depression and 164 more...
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franky's Words
formitastic, human resources, cocktail, gravatar, tequila, twitter, moloko, gmail, beeb, mp3, cover art, thumbnail and 184 more...
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FTL
Words listed first by me that don't belong in any other list.
licit, precis, mnemosyne, badinage, mariposa, lepidoptera, coruscation, poignant, meme, oxymoron, xenophobia, asterism and 128 more...
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mandarine's Words
antepenultimate, metonymy, synecdoche, pop, kern, inherit, clique, scrumptious, macerate, murmur, kerning, veranda and 1068 more...
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Words Covered in Faery Dust (P)
words that evoke magic, mystery, mayhem, magnificence or anything else that glimmers in the grass
pagan, page, pageant, pageboy, pagoda, paisley, paladin, palfrey, paling, pampas grass, pan, panoply and 194 more...
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Carry Me Home Again
Another kind of bear list, in conjunction with Carry Me Home: words deriving from the Greek pherein, ("to carry") or phoros, ("a carrying").
metaphor, euphoria, diaphoresis, anaphora, amphora, periphery, pheromone, telpher, tocopherol, chromatophore, gonophore, phoresy and 45 more...
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Stop being such a drama queen!
Dramatic words
maudlin, woebegone, ecstatic, pathos, tragedy, cantankerous, villainous, climax, hysterics, pyrotechnics, amorous, swoon and 6 more...
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scientific words
Tweets
Looking for tweets for pheromone.
ecbrenner This term was created in 1959 by two scientists to describe a chemical messenger released by the female silk worm moth to attract males. Feb 23, 2009