taxis

American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition

1. n. Biology The responsive movement of a free-moving organism or cell toward or away from an external stimulus, such as light.
2. n. Medicine The moving of a body part by manipulation into normal position, as after a dislocation, fracture, or hernia.

Century Dictionary and Cyclopedia

1. n. The orientation, locomotion, or migration of a cell or of an organism in relation to an external substance or form of energy. Positive taxis is motion toward and negative taxis motion away from an exciting agent. In loose usage ‘taxis’ is included in ‘tropism,’ but in a stricter usage ‘tropism’ is restricted to growth, and ‘taxis’ is applied to locomotion. Both tropism and taxis are exhibited by animals and by plants, but taxis is more frequently observed in animals and tropism in plants. Different forms of taxis are designated by the character of the stimulating agent: such are chemotaxis, photo-taxis, thermotaxis, electrotaxis, rheotaxis, stereotaxis, etc. Compare tropism.
2. n. In surgery, an operation by which parts which have quitted their natural situation are replaced by manipulation, as in reducing hernia, etc.
3. n. In ancient architecture, that disposition which assigns to every part of a building its just dimensions. It is synonymous with ordonnance in modern architecture.
4. n. In Greek antiquity, a division of troops corresponding more or less closely to the modern battalion; also, a larger division of an army, as a regiment or a brigade.
5. n. In zoology, classification; taxonomy; taxology.
6. n. In grammar and rhetoric, arrangement; order.

Wiktionary

1. n. biology The movement of an organism in response to a stimulus.
2. n. medicine The manipulation of a body part into its normal position after injury.
3. n. rhetoric The arrangement of the parts of a topic.
4. n. Plural form of taxi.

GNU Webster's 1913

1. n. (Surg.) Manipulation applied to a hernial tumor, or to an intestinal obstruction, for the purpose of reducing it.
2. n. In technical uses, as in architecture, biology, grammar, etc., arrangement; order; ordonnance.
3. n. a reflexive movement by a motile organism by which it moves or orients itself in relation to some source of stimulation.

WordNet 3.0

1. n. the surgical procedure of manually restoring a displaced body part
2. n. a locomotor response toward or away from an external stimulus by a motile (and usually simple) organism