Definitions

from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 5th Edition.

  • noun Genetics The offspring of genetically dissimilar parents or stock, especially the offspring produced by breeding plants or animals of different varieties, species, or races.
  • noun Something of mixed origin or composition, such as a word whose elements are derived from different languages.
  • noun Something having two kinds of components that produce the same or similar results, such as a vehicle powered by both an electric motor and an internal combustion engine as sources of power for the drivetrain.

from The Century Dictionary.

  • noun The offspring or progeny of animals or plants of different varieties, species, or genera; a half-breed or cross-breed; a mongrel.
  • noun Hence—2. Anything which is a product or mixture of two heterogeneous things, or comes from two different sources, as a word formed of elements from two different languages. See II., 2.
  • Produced from the union of opposite sexes of two different or distinct varieties, species, or genera; half-bred; cross-bred; mongrel. See I.
  • Hence Of heterogeneous origin; having a mixed character; combining diverse elements, as a word formed from two different languages, architecture combining diverse styles, etc.

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

  • noun (Biol.) The offspring of the union of two animals or plants derived from recognizably different genetic lines, as two distinct species, or two strains of the same species with known genetic differences; an animal or plant produced from the mixture of two genetic lines. See mongrel.
  • noun (Philol.) A word composed of elements which belong to different languages.
  • noun anything derived by a mixture of components or characteristics from two distinctly different sources.
  • adjective Produced from the mixture of two genetically distinct strains.
  • adjective derived by a mixture of characteristics from two distinctly different sources.

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

  • noun biology Offspring resulting from cross-breeding different entities, e.g. two different species or two purebred parent strains.
  • noun Something of mixed origin or composition.
  • noun A word whose elements are derived from different languages.
  • noun Short for hybrid vehicle (especially a car), one that runs on both fuel (gasoline/diesel) and electricity (battery or energy from the sun).
  • noun golf A golf club that combines the characteristics of an iron and a wood.
  • adjective consisting of diverse 'hybridized' components

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

  • adjective produced by crossbreeding
  • noun (genetics) an organism that is the offspring of genetically dissimilar parents or stock; especially offspring produced by breeding plants or animals of different varieties or breeds or species
  • noun a word that is composed of parts from different languages (e.g., `monolingual' has a Greek prefix and a Latin root)
  • noun a composite of mixed origin

Etymologies

from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 4th Edition

[Latin hibrida, hybrida, mongrel.]

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License

Known in English since 1601, but rare before c.1850. From Latin hybrida, a variant of ibrida ("a mongrel; specifically, offspring of a tame sow and a wild boar").

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