Definitions

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

  • noun The movement or growth of an organism toward or away from heat.

from The Century Dictionary.

  • noun In botany, the phenomenon of curvature produced in a growing plant-organ by changes of temperature. Organs which curve toward the source of heat are called positively thermotropic, and those which curve away from the source of heat, negatively thermotropic.
  • noun In biology, the bending or growing of organisms in relation to heat.

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

  • noun (Bot.) The phenomenon of turning towards a source of warmth, seen in the growing parts of some plants.

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

  • noun botany Thermotropic movement of a plant or plant part in response to changes in temperature.

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

  • noun an orienting response to warmth

Etymologies

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Examples

  • Thus it was that the interpretations of J. Loeb (Die Tropismen, 1913) on the basis of experiments done with lower animals, estab - lished the neologist ideas of “phototropism” (orien - tation or displacement reaction in the direction of light), and of “thermotropism” (reaction directed to - wards a source of heat), to explain animal and perhaps also human behavior.

    Dictionary of the History of Ideas FERNAND-LUCIEN MUELLER 1968

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