Word.ws English Dictionary

echeme

/ˈɛk.iːm/

echeme noun: a unit of sound produced by insects that can be broken down into multiple physically more basic sound units (syllables).

Noun

echeme (plural echemes)

  1. A unit of sound produced by insects that can be broken down into multiple physically more basic sound units (syllables).
    • This new term, then, is echeme, defined as: a first-order assemblage of syllables.[1976, W. B. Broughton, “Proposal for a new term ‘echeme’ to replace ‘chirp’ in animal acoustics”, in Physiological Entomology, volume 1, number 2, →DOI, pages 103–106
    • The general pattern of the low-frequency sweep is repeated in each echeme and does not appear to change as the insect matures[…].1978 July, William Latimer, Aspects of song interaction between the closely related bush cricket genera Platycleis and Metrioptera, DPhil Thesis, City of London Polytechnic (British Library’s...

Examples of echeme in a sentence

  • [T]he echemes of yersini have a uniform sound, lacking the 'metallic' unevenness characteristic of the echeme-sequences of biguttulus.1988, D.R. Ragge, W.J. Reynolds, “The songs and taxonomy of the grasshoppers of the Chorthippus biguttulus group in the Iberian Peninsula...
  • In sunlight, echemes are shorter, but echeme intervals are longer.2021, Wilbur L. Hershberger, “Calling and courtship songs of the rare, robust ground cricket, Allonemobius walkeri”, in Journal of...

Forms of echeme

pluralechemes

Origin of echeme

Learned borrowing from Ancient Greek ἤχημα (ḗkhēma, “a sound”), from ἠχέω (ēkhéō, “I make sound, I chirp”) + -μᾰ (-mă, forming nouns form verbal stems). Introduced by Broughton (1976).

Questions about echeme

What does echeme mean?
Echeme means a unit of sound produced by insects that can be broken down into multiple physically more basic sound units (syllables).
How do you use echeme in a sentence?
[T]he echemes of yersini have a uniform sound, lacking the 'metallic' unevenness characteristic of the echeme-sequences of biguttulus.
What part of speech is echeme?
Echeme is a noun.
How do you pronounce echeme?
Echeme is pronounced /ˈɛk.iːm/.
What is the plural of echeme?
The plural of echeme is echemes.

Words near echeme in the dictionary

  1. echeloning
  2. echelonment
  3. echelonments
  4. echelons
  5. Echeloot
  6. echeme
  7. echemes
  8. echeneid
  9. echeneidid
  10. echeneidids
  11. echeneids

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: echeme (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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