Definitions
American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition
- adj. Zoology Giving birth to living offspring that develop within the mother's body. Most mammals and some other animals are viviparous.
- adj. Botany Germinating or producing seeds that germinate before becoming detached from the parent plant, as in the mangrove.
- adj. Botany Producing bulbils or new plants rather than seed, as in the tiger lily.
Century Dictionary and Cyclopedia
- Bringing forth alive; having young which maintain vascular vital connection with the body of the parent until they are born in a comparatively advanced stage of development; reproducing by birth, not by hatching from an egg which is laid and afterward incubated: correlated with oviparous and ovoviviparous. See these words, and egg. In strictness, all metazoic animals and some protozoans are oviparous, since they produce ova; but the distinction subsists in the duration of the period in which the product of conception remains in the body of the parent. If the egg is quickly extruded. the animal is oviparous; if it is separated from the mother, but hatches inside the body, ovoviviparous; if it comes to term in a womb, viviparous. Among vertebrates, all mammals excepting monotremes, no birds, many reptiles, and some fishes are viviparous. Invertebrates are mostly oviparous, in some cases ovoviviparous, in a few viviparous.
- In botany, germinating or sprouting from a seed or bud which is still on the parent plant. The term is also sometimes equivalent to proliferous as applied to grasses, rushes, sedges, etc. See
prolification , From an examination of the structure of viviparous grasses.Masters, Teratol., p. 169.
Wiktionary
- adj. Being born alive, as are most mammals, some reptiles, and a few fish (as opposed to being laid as an egg and subsequently hatching, as do most birds and many other species).
- adj. Arising from an embryo that develops from the outset (rather than from a true seed that then germinates).
GNU Webster's 1913
- adj. Producing young in a living state, as most mammals, or as those plants the offspring of which are produced alive, either by bulbs instead of seeds, or by the seeds themselves germinating on the plant, instead of falling, as they usually do; -- opposed to
oviparous .
WordNet 3.0
- adj. producing living young (not eggs)
Etymologies
- From Latin vīviparus : vīvus, alive; see gwei- in Indo-European roots + -parus, -parous.
Examples
“All animals whatsoever, whether they fly or swim or walk upon dry land, whether they bring forth their young alive or in the egg, develop in the same way: save only that some have the navel attached to the womb, namely the viviparous animals, and some have it attached to the egg, and some to both parts alike, as in a certain sort of fishes.”
“Many of the instances of so-called viviparous plants, _e. g.”
Vegetable Teratology An Account of the Principal Deviations from the Usual Construction of Plants
“= -- The formation of little bulbs upon the surfaces or edges of leaves, forming what are called viviparous leaves, has long been familiar to botanists amongst Alliums.”
Vegetable Teratology An Account of the Principal Deviations from the Usual Construction of Plants
“The interlacing forest and grassland provide a variety of habitats with an unusually rich flora and fauna, including unique endemic species such as viviparous toads.”
“I counted as a female those whose vitellaria or ovaries I had seen or those whom I had seen carrying or laying eggs or live embryos (some are viviparous).”
“The most noteworthy species is the viviparous toad Nimbaphrynoides occidentalis (EN), which occurs in montane grasslands at 1,200-1,600 m and is one of the world's few tailless amphibians that is totally viviparous.”
“It has an especially rich flora and fauna, with endemic species such as the viviparous toad and is known as a centre of plant diversity.”
“There are quite a lot of ichthyosaur fossils showing death during childbirth; they were viviparous.”
“Nectophrynoides viviparous (VU) occurs in the Uluguru and Udzungwa Mountains and in the Southern Highlands of eastern and southern Tanzania.”
“The Eastern Arc Mountains and Southern Rift are home to the genus Nectophrynoides, which includes the majority of the worlds viviparous (live-bearing) frogs.”
Lists
These user-created lists contain the word ‘viviparous’.
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Logolepsy
"Luciferous Logolepsy is a collection of over 9,000 obscure English words. Though the definition of an 'English' word might seem to be straightforward, it is not. There exist so many adopted, deriv...
Anschauung, Areopagus, Argus, Briarean, Dei gratia, Dei judicium, Deo volente, Duecento, Foehn, Geflugelte Worte, Gegenschein, Hakenkreuz and 9230 more...
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Awesome biological adjectives
vespine, virulent, viviparous, vulpine, vulturine, xeromorphic, ursine, ungulate, terricolous, sylvan, setaceous, sciurine and 13 more...
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"Brave New World"
From the book "Brave New World" by Aldous Huxley, which I purchased by accident.
brevity, florid, callow, sibilant, boskage, apopletic, asceptic, setentious, decant, predestine, viviparous, proliferate and 7 more...
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-parous
bearing offspring or reproducing in a specified manner
sionnach Whatever about their viviparity or lack thereof, it appears that fowls were plural back in 1828. Is this still true?
In Italian, it appears that fowls are volatile.
Do those folks at Webster's exclude the possibility of passenger aircraft that stay aloft as well? Jul 26, 2008
bestiary webster's (1828) makes this keen observation: "...as distinguished from oviparous, producing eggs, as fowls. if fowls were viviparous, it is difficult to think how the female would fly during preganancy." Jul 26, 2008