apoptosis

1. 1.

   a type of cell death in which the cell uses specialized cellular machinery to kill itself; a cell suicide mechanism that enables metazoans to control cell number and eliminate cells that threaten the animal's survival

   Synonymsprogrammed cell deathcaspase-mediated cell death

   Broadernecrobiosis

Other forms of apoptosis

plural

apoptosises·

Forms marked · are formed by the regular rule rather than recorded in the source data. English keeps a few hundred irregulars and the rest follow the pattern, so the rule is right far more often than not — but it is a rule, and the mark says so.

Questions about apoptosis

What does apoptosis mean?

apoptosis means "a type of cell death in which the cell uses specialized cellular machinery to kill itself; a cell suicide mechanism that enables metazoans to control cell number and eliminate cells that threaten the animal's survival".

How many syllables are in apoptosis?

apoptosis has 4 syllables: ap-op-to-sis. The stress falls on "to". In IPA it is /ˌæpɔpˈtoʊsɪz/.

What is another word for apoptosis?

Close synonyms include programmed cell death, caspase-mediated cell death. Each sense on this page lists its own synonyms, because a word with several meanings rarely has one substitute that works for all of them.

Is apoptosis a common word?

apoptosis is banded "Rare" — specialist or archaic — most readers will not have met it. The band comes from how often the word appears in a large corpus of everyday English, not from an editor's impression.