Word.ws English Dictionary

autothysis

autothysis noun: a process by which an animal destroys itself via internal rupture or explosion of an organ.

Noun

autothysis (uncountable)

  1. A process by which an animal destroys itself via internal rupture or explosion of an organ.
    • Another example of autothysis, or defensive suicidal rupturing, can be found in Neocapritermes taracua.2018 April 29, Killian Fox, The Observer

Origin of autothysis

From the Ancient Greek roots αὐτός (autós, “self”) and θυσία (thusía, “sacrifice”); proposed by Maschwitz and Maschwitz in 1974 to describe the defensive mechanism of the carpenter ant Camponotus saundersi.

Questions about autothysis

What does autothysis mean?
Autothysis means a process by which an animal destroys itself via internal rupture or explosion of an organ.
What part of speech is autothysis?
Autothysis is a noun.

Words near autothysis in the dictionary

  1. autothermic
  2. autothermy
  3. autothonous
  4. autothrottle
  5. autothrottles
  6. autothysis
  7. autotiering
  8. autotimer
  9. autotimers
  10. autotitrate
  11. autotitrated

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: autothysis (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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Cite this entry: “autothysis.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/autothysis. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.