Word.ws English Dictionary

aecium

/ˈiːs.i.əm/

aecium noun: a cuplike fruiting structure of some parasitic rust fungi that contains chains of aeciospores.

aecium: a cuplike fruiting structure of some parasitic rust fungi that contains chains of aeciospores
Image: Lairich Rig, CC BY-SA 2.0, via Wikimedia Commons

Noun

aecium (plural aecia or aeciums)

  1. A cuplike fruiting structure of some parasitic rust fungi that contains chains of aeciospores.
    • The writer therefore made observations to determine the conditions under which the aecia open and discharge spores most readily.1932 August, Ralph Ulysses Cotter, Factors Affecting the Development of the Aecial Stage of Puccinia Graminis, US Dept of Agriculture, Technical Bulletin No. 314, page 29
    • The receptive hyphae with binucleate cells eventually form the basal cells of the aecium.[…]Many cup-like structures, called aecia, appear on the lower surface of leaf.2010, N. K. Soni, Vandana Soni, Fundamentals of Botany, volume 1, page 127

Forms of aecium

pluralaecia
pluralaeciums
alternative formæcium

Origin of aecium

From New Latin aecium, from Ancient Greek αἰκίᾱ (aikíā, “injury, insult”). However Merriam-Webster relates that aecium is a back-formation from aecidium and is not related to the Greek αἰκίᾱ (aikíā). The word aecium was "introduced as a substitute for aecidium by the Purdue University plant pathologist J. C. Arthur (1850–1942) in an effort to reform terminology for rust fungi; see Terminology of the Spore-Structures in the Uredinales, Botanical Gazette, vol. 39 (Mar., 1905), pp. 219-22."

Questions about aecium

What does aecium mean?
Aecium means a cuplike fruiting structure of some parasitic rust fungi that contains chains of aeciospores.
What part of speech is aecium?
Aecium is a noun.
How do you pronounce aecium?
Aecium is pronounced /ˈiːs.i.əm/.
What is the plural of aecium?
The plural of aecium is aecia.

Words near aecium in the dictionary

  1. aecidiospores
  2. aecidium
  3. aecidiums
  4. aeciospore
  5. aeciospores
  6. aecium
  7. aeciums
  8. AECOPD
  9. AECs
  10. AED
  11. aedeagal

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: aecium (page history and authors). Text available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 license. Word.ws reformatted the entry and added links. Wiktionary data of 2026-09-02.

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