Word.ws English Dictionary

ovism

ovism noun: the belief that the ovum holds all material needed for the development of the embryo.

Noun

ovism (uncountable)

  1. (historical) The belief that the ovum holds all material needed for the development of the embryo.
    • Above all, ovism seems to us utterly impossible: how could every human being that ever existed or ever will exist be contained, fully formed, within Eve's ovaries?2015, David Wootton, The Invention of Science, Penguin, published 2016, page 238
    Synonyms:
    ovulism

Synonyms of ovism

  • ovulism

Origin of ovism

From Latin ovum (“egg”) + -ism.

Questions about ovism

What does ovism mean?
Ovism means the belief that the ovum holds all material needed for the development of the embryo.
What part of speech is ovism?
Ovism is a noun.

Words near ovism in the dictionary

  1. oviscapes
  2. oviscapt
  3. oviscapte
  4. oviscaptes
  5. oviscapts
  6. ovism
  7. ovispirin
  8. ovispirins
  9. ovist
  10. ovistic
  11. ovistrip

Source and license

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