animalculist

English

Etymology

From animalcule + -ist.

Pronunciation

  • (UK) IPA(key): /anɪˈmalkjʊlɪst/

Noun

animalculist (plural animalculists)

  1. (now historical) A believer in the theory that the embryo exists preformed within the spermatozoon; a proponent of animalculism. [from 18th c.]
  2. (obsolete) Someone who studies animalcules. [19th c.]
    • 1882, Popular Science Monthly Volume 22, Sketch of Matthias Jacob Schleiden
      All at once a botanist, already celebrated, proclaimed that he had seen the embryo forming in the grain of pollen and penetrating the ovule with the pollenical tube. This unexpected animalculist was Schleiden.

Translations

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Adjective

animalculist (comparative more animalculist, superlative most animalculist)

  1. (now historical) Pertaining to animalculism. [from 19th c.]
    • 1997, Roy Porter, The Greatest Benefit to Mankind, Folio Society 2016, p. 217:
      Countering ‘ovism’, the rival ‘animalculist’ school regarded spermatozoa, discovered in semen by Leeuwenhoek, as the true source of conception.
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