homunculus
Americannoun
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an artificially made dwarf, supposedly produced in a flask by an alchemist.
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a fully formed, miniature human body believed, according to some medical theories of the 16th and 17th centuries, to be contained in the spermatozoon.
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a diminutive human being.
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the human fetus.
noun
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a miniature man; midget
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(in early biological theory) a fully-formed miniature human being existing in a spermatozoon or egg
Other Word Forms
Derived Forms
Inflected Forms
Nouns
Etymology
Origin of homunculus
1650–60; < Latin, equivalent to homun- (variant of homin-, stem of homō man; see Homo) + -culus -cule 1
Explanation
A homunculus is a "little man." In the 17th century, theorists called preformationists argued that a human being begins life as a tiny, preformed person — a homunculus — encapsulated in the sperm or, as some thought, in the egg. The preformationists were arguing against Aristotle's view that humans and other organisms begin life as unformed material that gradually takes shape, and, in the case of humans, this process includes a moment of "ensoulment" — when the embryo gets a soul and becomes fully human. A homunculus can also be a "little man" of any sort. You can describe your Ken doll as a homunculus. The word is the diminutive of the Latin word homo "man."
Vocabulary lists containing homunculus
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The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time
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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:
Wilder Penfield, the trailblazing Canadian-American neurosurgeon, created the homunculus metaphor after mapping areas of the human brain by using direct electrical stimulation in awake patients in the 1930s.
From Scientific American ● Apr. 21, 2023
Overall, our findings mean that the homunculus wears no clothes.
From Scientific American ● Apr. 21, 2023
As part of our quest, we became aware of contradictory findings in macaques and other nonhuman primates, which had not at the time sufficed to challenge the homunculus metaphor.
From Scientific American ● Apr. 21, 2023
What was this distinct brain network right in the middle of the homunculus?
From Scientific American ● Apr. 21, 2023
And they think that this person is their special human mind, which is called a homunculus, which means a little man.
From "The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time" by Mark Haddon
The myth of artificial life, from homunculi and cyborgs to robots and androids, is the focus of an exhibition about the Golem at the Jewish Museum Berlin.
From US News ● Sep. 22, 2016
Now Saul Zaentz and his studio partners have a new target, albeit one less likely to elicit sympathy from fans of hairy-footed Shire-dwelling homunculi: low-budget flick Age of the Hobbits.
From The Guardian ● Nov. 8, 2012
We had been eager to interview Ms. Holmes about small men — the homunculi who infest her character’s house in the movie.
From New York Times ● Aug. 13, 2011
Another Irishman, James Nesbitt, was tipped to play Bofur the dwarf, one of the 12 bearded homunculi who arrive at Baggins's hobbit hole with Gandalf in JRR Tolkien's classic fantasy tale.
From The Guardian ● Oct. 18, 2010
Of these, the most marvellous were those strange beings, male and female, which were called homunculi.
From The Magician by Maugham, W. Somerset (William Somerset)
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.
