ameba
Americannoun
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amebas,
plural
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amebae
plural
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any of numerous freshwater, marine, or parasitic one-celled protozoa of the order Amoebida, characterized by a granular nucleus surrounded by a jellylike mass of cytoplasm that forms temporary extensions, or pseudopodia, by which the organism moves, engulfs food particles, and forms food vacuoles.
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a protozoan of the genus Amoeba, inhabiting bottom vegetation of freshwater ponds and streams: used widely in laboratory studies.
noun
Other Word Forms
Derived Forms
Inflected Forms
Nouns
Etymology
Origin of ameba
From New Latin amoeba, from Greek amoibḗ “change, alternation,”, akin to ameíbein “to exchange”
Example Sentences
Examples are provided to illustrate real-world usage of words in context. Any opinions expressed do not reflect the views of Dictionary.com.
See Examples For:
People are infected when water containing the ameba enters the body through the nose, usually when people go swimming or diving in lakes and rivers.
From Seattle Times ● Sep. 27, 2021
City officials said the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention confirmed the presence of the ameba in water samples from the Don Misenhimer Park splash pad on Friday.
From Seattle Times ● Sep. 27, 2021
Partially inflated at the Roswell, N.M., launch site, it looks like an ameba dressed in haute couture.
From Slate ● Mar. 26, 2014
The bacillus strikes the bowels more quickly and feverishly than does the ameba.
From Time Magazine Archive
They have the same power of changing their shape, of surrounding and swallowing scraps of food, as has the ameba, and are a combination of scavengers and sanitary police.
From A Handbook of Health by Woods Hutchinson
For the white cells, which move about like amebae, are the body's shock troops; they gobble up invading bacteria, produce antidotes which neutralize their toxins.
From Time Magazine Archive
Most people do not think of microscopic bacteria as plants, any more than they think of amebae, clams and sponges as "animals."
From Time Magazine Archive
It will hold everything from amebas to high invertebrates.
From Time Magazine Archive
With a grunt of amazement, Greg slammed a beam straight into the heart of the amebas.
From Empire by Clifford D. Simak
These cells are like little amebas in the blood.
From Applied Physiology Including the Effects of Alcohol and Narcotics by Frank Overton
A streak of terrible light was striking at them from the Interplanetarian, blinding white light, and along that highway of light swarmed a horde of little green figures, like squirming green amebas.
From Empire by Clifford D. Simak
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.
