Word.ws English Dictionary

neotenic

neotenic adjective: exhibiting neoteny.

Adjective

neotenic (not comparable)

  1. Exhibiting neoteny
    • Devils Lake is where I began my career as a limnologist in 1964, studying the lake’s neotenic salamanders and chironomids, or midge flies. […] The Devils Lake Basin is an endorheic, or closed, basin covering about 9,800 square kilometers in northeastern North Dakota.2012 January, Douglas Larson, “Runaway Devils Lake”, in American Scientist, volume 100, number 1, archived from the original on 23 May 2012, page 46
    Synonyms:
    pedomorphic

Noun

neotenic (plural neotenics)

  1. Such an organism

Synonyms of neotenic

Forms of neotenic

pluralneotenics

Origin of neotenic

From neoteny + -ic.

Words formed from neotenic

Questions about neotenic

What does neotenic mean?
Neotenic means exhibiting neoteny.
What part of speech is neotenic?
Neotenic can be an adjective or a noun.

Words near neotenic in the dictionary

  1. neoteleosts
  2. neotendon
  3. neotendons
  4. neotene
  5. neotenia
  6. neotenic
  7. neotenic complex syndrome
  8. neotenics
  9. neotenies
  10. neotenin
  11. neotenize

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: neotenic (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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