Word.ws English Dictionary

saprotrophism

saprotrophism noun: the condition of being saprotrophic.

Noun

saprotrophism (uncountable)

  1. The condition of being saprotrophic
    • Of all the potential levels of interaction between fungi and other organisms, parasitism is perhaps the most difficult to demonstrate and distinguish from saprotrophism in the fossil record.2009, Edith L. Taylor, Thomas N. Taylor, Michael Krings, Paleobotany: The Biology and Evolution of Fossil Plants, page 99
    • Savile (43) suggests that obligate parasitism is a fundamental attribute of primitive groups and that more than once saprotrophism may have derived from it.2012, R. Wood, Specificity in Plant Diseases, page 2

Origin of saprotrophism

From sapro- + -trophism.

Questions about saprotrophism

What does saprotrophism mean?
Saprotrophism means the condition of being saprotrophic.
What part of speech is saprotrophism?
Saprotrophism is a noun.

Words near saprotrophism in the dictionary

  1. saprostomous
  2. saprot
  3. saprotroph
  4. saprotrophic
  5. saprotrophically
  6. saprotrophism
  7. saprotrophs
  8. saprotrophy
  9. saprovore
  10. saprovores
  11. saprovorous

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: saprotrophism (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.

Last updated:

Cite this entry: “saprotrophism.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/saprotrophism. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.