Word of the Day:
protist
What It Means
Any of the eukaryotic, usually unicellular organisms—including protozoans, slime molds and some algae—historically grouped into the kingdom Protista (or Protoctista), now distributed over several clades; any eukaryote that is not a plant, animal or fungus.
Any single-celled eukaryote, prokaryote or sponge .
Any single-celled eukaryote or prokaryote .
Protist in Context
“Besides the hundreds or thousands of metres of fungal mycelium in a teaspoon of healthy soil, there are more bacteria, protists, insects and arthropods than the number of humans who have ever lived on Earth.”
Did You Know?
From translingual Protista, from Ancient Greek πρώτιστος (prṓtistos).
Source and license
Adapted from Wiktionary: protist (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: “protist.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/protist. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.
