Word of the Day:
abiogenesis
What It Means
The origination of living organisms from lifeless matter; such genesis as does not involve the action of living parents.
Abiogenesis in Context
“The assertion of [Louis] Pasteur is justified, that the onus probandi [burden of proof] lies with abiogenesists, since there is no experience of any living form more than ¹⁄₁₀₀₀ of an inch in diameter springing to life out of inorganic matter; it is therefore vastly improbable (needing most cogent...”
Did You Know?
From Ancient Greek ἀ- (a-, “not-”, the alpha privative) + βῐ́ος (bĭ́os, “life”) (ultimately from Proto-Indo-European *gʷeyh₃- (“to live”)) + γένεσις (génesis, “origin, source; manner of birth; creation”) (ultimately from Proto-Indo-European *ǵénh₁tis (“birth; production”)); equivalent to abio- + genesis. The words biogenesis and abiogenesis were both coined by English biologist Thomas Henry Huxley (1825–1895) in 1870 (see the quotation).
Source and license
Adapted from Wiktionary: abiogenesis (page history and authors). Text available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 license. Word.ws chose the word and reformatted its meaning, examples and origin.
Cite this entry: “abiogenesis.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/abiogenesis. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.
