Word.ws English Dictionary

hairy cell

hairy cell noun: a kind of malignant B cell in an uncommon form of leukemia of unknown cause, having a "hairy" appearance under the microscope.

Noun

hairy cell (plural hairy cells)

  1. A kind of malignant B cell in an uncommon form of leukemia of unknown cause, having a "hairy" appearance under the microscope.
    • Studies of the viable blood cells with phase contrast microscopy showed peculiar cells that had numerous short villi and were arbitrarily called “hairy cells.”1966 February, Robert Schrek, ““Hairy” Cells in Blood in Lymphoreticular Neoplastic Disease and “Flagellated” Cells of Normal Lymph Nodes”, in Blood, volume 27, number 2, page 199

Forms of hairy cell

pluralhairy cells

Origin of hairy cell

Coined in 1966.

Questions about hairy cell

What does hairy cell mean?
Hairy cell means a kind of malignant B cell in an uncommon form of leukemia of unknown cause, having a "hairy" appearance under the microscope.
What part of speech is hairy cell?
Hairy cell is a noun.
What is the plural of hairy cell?
The plural of hairy cell is hairy cells.

Words near hairy cell in the dictionary

  1. hairy balls
  2. hairy banana
  3. hairy bananas
  4. hairy canaries
  5. hairy canary
  6. hairy cell
  7. hairy cells
  8. hairy click beetle
  9. hairy click beetles
  10. hairy Darling pea
  11. hairy Darling peas

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: hairy cell (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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