Word.ws English Dictionary

meroic

meroic adjective: pertaining to nephridia that are formed by longitudinal or traverse fragmentation of a single original pair of embryonic rudiments in each segment.

Adjective (1)

meroic (not comparable)

  1. Pertaining to nephridia that are formed by longitudinal or traverse fragmentation of a single original pair of embryonic rudiments in each segment.
    • Characteristic traits, all apomorphies, are perichaetine setae, tubulo-racemose prostates, avesiculate meroic nephridia and opisthogastry (the development of intestinal gizzards, which in this genus are multiple in the region of segments 20–26).1998, R Blakemore, “Retrovescus, a new genus of opisthogastric earthworm from Tasmania”, in Invertebrate Systematics
    • Due to the somewhat macerated specimens Michaelsen (1933) was not able to recognize the structure of the excretory system in the type species, however, he found it meroic at W. beauforti.2010, Cs. Csuzdi, “Review of the Paleotropical Neogastrini Earthworms (Oligochaeta, Acanthodrilidae: Benhamiinae) With Description of Two New Genera”, in Acta Zoologica Academiae Scientiarum...

Adjective (2) capitalized: Meroic

Meroic (not comparable)

  1. Pertaining to the ancient African civilization south of Egypt with the capital city Meroë.
    • Group C, contemporaneous with the Middle Empire, underwent, on the contrary, an opposite current of negroid influence as we have already emphasized and which increases in intensity starting with the Meroic era (cFigure 2).1977, G Billy, “Population changes in Egypt and Nubia”, in Journal of Human Evolution
    • The ultimate origins of iron in east Africa, then, must remain conjectural, though a spread from Meroe up the Nile to the Lake Victoria region is the most plausable route at the moment, and Meroic furnaces and tool styles are similar to those in East Africa.1981, Thomas T. Spear, Kenya's past: an introduction to historical method in Africa, →ISBN, page 19
  2. (alternative) Alternative form of Meroitic.
    • In 1974 (28th January to 3rd February), a seminar was held in Cairo under the auspices of UNESCO where some twenty specialists came together to discuss the settlement of ancient Egypt and the deciphering of the Meroic language.1978, Africa Quarterly - Volume 18, page 16
    • The Meroic Script indigenized the Egyptian hieroglyphic writing and invented an alphabet of 23 letters, containing details of correspondence between the central government and provinces, trade and administrative matters.2008, Samuel Alfayo Nyanchoga, Samson Moenga Omwoyo, Ben N. Nyariki, Aspects of African history, page 62

Forms of meroic

alternative formMeroitic
alternative formMerotic

Origin of meroic

From mero- + -ic.

From Meroe + -ic.

Questions about meroic

What does meroic mean?
Meroic means pertaining to nephridia that are formed by longitudinal or traverse fragmentation of a single original pair of embryonic rudiments in each segment.
What part of speech is meroic?
Meroic is an adjective.

Words near meroic in the dictionary

  1. merohedrally
  2. merohedric
  3. merohedrism
  4. merohedry
  5. meroi
  6. meroic
  7. meroir
  8. meroism
  9. meroistic
  10. Meroitic
  11. Meroiticist

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: meroic (page history and authors); Meroic (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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