centromere

1. 1.

   a specialized condensed region of each chromosome that appears during mitosis where the chromatids are held together to form an X shape

   “the centromere is difficult to sequence”

   Synonymskinetochore

   Broaderstructure

   Part ofchromosome

Other forms of centromere

plural

centromeres·

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 centromere

What does centromere mean?

centromere means "a specialized condensed region of each chromosome that appears during mitosis where the chromatids are held together to form an X shape".

How many syllables are in centromere?

centromere has 3 syllables: cen-tro-mere. The stress falls on "cen".

What is another word for centromere?

Close synonyms include kinetochore. 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 centromere a common word?

centromere 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.