multicellular
Americanadjective
Etymology
Origin of multicellular
Explanation
Something that's multicellular is a complex organism, made up of many cells. Humans are multicellular. While single-celled organisms can't usually be seen without a microscope, you can see most multicelluar organisms with the naked eye. Plants and animals are multicellular — although they all, including humans, start as a single cell that reproduces into many. Multi means "many," and the Latin root of cellular is cellularis, "of little cells," from cella, "small room."
Vocabulary lists containing multicellular
Cell Biology - Middle School
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Cell Biology - High School
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Plants (Botany) - Middle School
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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.
Others are much larger and multicellular, such as kelp, slime molds, and red algae.
From Science Daily • May 7, 2026
The findings, published in Science, offer new insight into how protein systems change over time and how multicellular life developed in these ecologically important bacteria.
From Science Daily • Apr. 20, 2026
By the beginning of the Cambrian explosion of multicellular organisms about 540 million years ago, the ancestors of today’s ecdysozoans were already alive and varied in form and behavior, suggesting they arose even earlier.
From Science Magazine • Nov. 20, 2024
Rose disagrees with this hypothesis and points to the existence of multicellular animals, which have the same basic cell biology as humans, that don’t age at all.
From Salon • Oct. 12, 2024
All across Yazd, people faced the qibla to pray, a titanic multicellular entity focused on the same moment in space-time.
From "Darius the Great Is Not Okay" by Adib Khorram
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.
