saprophytic

1. 1.

   obtaining food osmotically from dissolved organic material
2. 2.

   (of some plants or fungi) feeding on dead or decaying organic matter

   Similarherbivorous

   plant · Fungi

Questions about saprophytic

What does saprophytic mean?

saprophytic means "obtaining food osmotically from dissolved organic material". That is the primary sense; the word has 2 in total, listed in full on this page.

How many syllables are in saprophytic?

saprophytic has 4 syllables and divides as sa-pro-phy-tic 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.

Is saprophytic a common word?

saprophytic 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.