Word.ws English Dictionary

saproxylic

saproxylic adjective: relating to, or causing, the decay of wood.

Adjective

saproxylic (not comparable)

  1. Relating to, or causing, the decay of wood.
  2. That lives in or feeds on decaying wood.
    • The study says 18% of saproxylic beetles – which depend on dead and decaying wood for some of their lifecycle – now exist on a conservation plane between “vulnerable” and “critically endangered”.2018 March 5, Arthur Neslen, The Guardian

Noun

saproxylic (plural saproxylics)

  1. Any organism that lives in decaying wood

Forms of saproxylic

pluralsaproxylics

Origin of saproxylic

From sapro- + xylo- + -ic.

Questions about saproxylic

What does saproxylic mean?
Saproxylic means relating to, or causing, the decay of wood.
What part of speech is saproxylic?
Saproxylic can be an adjective or a noun.

Words near saproxylic in the dictionary

  1. saprotrophy
  2. saprovore
  3. saprovores
  4. saprovorous
  5. saproxanthin
  6. saproxylic
  7. saproxylics
  8. saproxylophagous
  9. saproxylophagy
  10. saprozoic
  11. sapræmia

Source and license

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