Also called Japanese isinglass. Also called Japanese gelatin. Also called Chinese gelatin. Also called Chinese isinglass. Also agar-agar. a gelatinlike product of certain seaweeds, used for solidifying certain culture media, as a thickening agent for ice cream and other foods, as a substitute for gelatin, in adhesives, as an emulsifier, etc.
Biology. a culture medium having an agar base.
First recorded in 1885–90, agar is from the Malay word agaragar seaweed from which a gelatin is rendered, or the gelatin itself
Examples are provided to illustrate real-world usage of words in context. Any opinions expressed do not reflect the views of Dictionary.com.
To identify the animals with mutations that made them fertile again, the researchers put the nematodes on agar plates filled with yummy bacteria.
From Science Daily • Jan. 4, 2024
Furthermore, organ agar could enable researchers without access to animal models to create physiologically relevant models of infection or colonization and allow for more efficient screening of bacterial and other microorganism candidates for further study.
From Science Daily • Nov. 30, 2023
Limoncello “pearls” created with the help of lemon and agar agar.
From Washington Post • Jan. 24, 2023
Chloe swabs parts of her body, or plants, and transfers the samples to petri dishes with a special growth medium inside called agar.
From BBC • Oct. 3, 2022
We can imagine them, curious and dispassionate, observing us, as we would watch a bacterial culture in a dish of agar, to determine whether, this year again, we manage to avoid self- destruction.
From "Cosmos" by Carl Sagan
Definitions and idiom definitions from Dictionary.com Unabridged, based on the Random House Unabridged Dictionary, © Random House, Inc. 2023
Idioms from The American Heritage® Idioms Dictionary copyright © 2002, 2001, 1995 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company.
