Definitions
American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition
- adj. Zoology Reproducing freely by means of buds and side branches, as corals do.
- adj. Botany Freely producing buds or offshoots, especially from unusual places, as shoots from flowers or fruits from fruits.
Century Dictionary and Cyclopedia
- Bearing offspring. In botany, subject to or affected by prolification. See
prolification , 2. Also prolific, proligerous.
Wiktionary
- adj. producing many offspring; prolific or proliferative
- adj. botany producing many buds or offshoots from leaves or flowers
- adj. zoology reproducing by budding
GNU Webster's 1913
- adj. (Bot.) Bearing offspring; -- applied to a flower from within which another is produced, or to a branch or frond from which another rises, or to a plant which is reproduced by buds or gemmæ.
- adj. Producing young by budding.
- adj. Producing sexual zooids by budding; -- said of the blastostyle of a hydroid.
- adj. Producing a cluster of branchlets from a larger branch; -- said of corals.
Etymologies
- From Medieval Latin prōlifer : Latin prōlēs, prōl-, offspring; see al-2 in Indo-European roots + Latin -fer, -fer. (American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition)
Examples
“In some of the instances of so-called proliferous pears the carpels would seem to be entirely absent, and the dilated portion of the axis to be alone repeated.”
Vegetable Teratology An Account of the Principal Deviations from the Usual Construction of Plants
“It was made for Bishop Lothar Franz von Schönborn (reigned from 1693 until 1729; he was also Elector-Archsbishop of Mainz, and one of the most famous and proliferous builders of the German baroque), whose coat of arms is embroidered on the seam:”
Catholic Bamberg: The Vestments of Pope Clement II and Other Treasures from the Diocesan Museum
“For example: an amoeba might gaily multiply itself into proliferous plurality, gobbling up all the sugary water in the vicinity -- until there is no more sugar and too many amoebae, who then all abruptly die.”
“Both are proliferous ground-covering plants indigenous to the Andean moor ecosystem (bofedales).”
“Not only does it represent the integration of the existing proliferous and dispersed legislation, but it is also wholly conceived as a national health system, because it totally regulates the fundamental aspects of this state activity.”
“By now the proliferous gaming houses, the interstellar numbers service, the randoma-tic sweepstakes, were only froth on the Wheel's activities; the Wheel alone, for instance, had the ability to keep the huge interstellar economy running smoothly, applying to the stock and commodity exchanges the same randomatic principles that governed the fermat networks.”
“It is also true that Algeria, from a financial and an economic point of view, will remain, even after peace is restored, a terrific drain on her resources, because it is not a rich country, and because its Moslem population is extremely proliferous.”
“Stems simple, sometimes proliferous at the base, globose when young, afterwards almost cylinder or pear-shaped, 5 in. high, 2 in. in diameter; tubercles ½ in. long, arranged in twelve spiral rows, slightly woolly in axils.”
“-- A small Thimble Cactus, remarkable for its proliferous stems, a single stem 2 in. high producing all round its upper half numerous, offshoots, which fall to the ground and grow.”
“-- Stem simple when young, proliferous at the sides when old, the young plants developing from the apices of the tubercles, and not in the axils, as is usual.”
Lists
These user-created lists contain the word ‘proliferous’.
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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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A Galimafrée of Plant Anatomy & Morph...
A hodgepodge, jumble, jambalaya, *gallimaufry, circus and tent revival of plant anatomy and morphology terms and phrases - its a big tent, and no tickets are required.
*array, collecti...naked bud, leaf blade, brochidodromous, serrate, cork cambium, rhizomatous, flower stalk, deciduous sepal, petal, whorl, nectar gland, stamen and 1348 more...
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Life is rife .................
-ife- & -iferous : common and not-so-common words about life
fructiferous, ifere, glomuliferous, graniferous, guttiferales, lifen, manifest, nimbiferous, oviferous, roriferous, petaliferous, rangifer and 105 more...
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Carry Me Home
Another kind of bear list: words bearing the -fer suffix ("that which carries"), the -ferous suffix ("bearing," "producing," or "yielding").
Also see (if you like) Carry Me Home Again.aquifer, conifer, umbellifer, transfer, thurifer, defer, telfer, suffer, rotifer, refer, foraminifer, poriferous and 157 more...
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Adjectival Arcana
A roster of adjectives that infrequently surface in typical conversation and writing. Many are dredged from scientific or other technical jargon or sieved from examples of disused archaic forms.
unitegmic, acaulescent, reticuloendothelial, ingressive, uniate, acanthopterygian, ossific, epiphysial, perivisceral, acœlomatous, cestoid, acælomate and 7756 more...
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SocialWorker32's Words
proliferous, loquacious, melancholic, pugnacious, moxie, ginormous, rudimentary, pusillanimous, quagmire, transphobia, voracity, veracity and 27 more...
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10th Grade Unit 4 (FER)
vociferous, reference, proliferous, inference, fertile, deference, coniferous, circumference
Tweets
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reesetee In zoology, reproducing freely by means of buds and side branches, as corals do. In botany, freely producing buds or offshoots, especially from unusual places, such as shoots from flowers or fruits from fruits. Nov 19, 2007