autotomy

1. 1.

   spontaneous removal or casting off of a body part (as the tail of a lizard or claw of a lobster) especially when the organism is injured or under attack

   Broaderremoval

Other forms of autotomy

plural

autotomies·

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 autotomy

What does autotomy mean?

autotomy means "spontaneous removal or casting off of a body part (as the tail of a lizard or claw of a lobster) especially when the organism is injured or under attack".

How many syllables are in autotomy?

autotomy has 4 syllables and divides as au-to-to-my under the regular spelling rules. It is not in the CMU Pronouncing Dictionary, so that comes from how the word is written rather than from a recorded pronunciation, and no stress or phonetic transcription is claimed for it.