paramecium
Americannoun
noun
Other Word Forms
Noun Inflected Forms
Etymology
Origin of paramecium
1745–55; < New Latin < Greek paramḗk ( ēs ) oblong, oval + New Latin -ium noun suffix; see -ium
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Explanation
Paramecium is a zoological term for a teeny creature that's part of the genus Paramecium. Any paramecium will have an oblong form and be unicellular. That's how small a paramecium is: it only consists of one cell. To look at a paramecium, you'd better have a powerful microscope. The shape of a paramecium has been compared to a slipper or other type of shoe. Paramecia — that's the plural form — are found in freshwater and feed on other extremely small organisms.
Vocabulary lists containing paramecium
Microbiology - High School
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A Short History of Nearly Everything
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What Stars Are Made Of
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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:
Each is a rectangle about 300 micrometers long and 200 micrometers wide, roughly the size of a paramecium.
From Science Magazine ● Mar. 7, 2024
The book takes us from the clumsy inquisitiveness of an upstart paramecium searching for food several hundred million years ago to the restless seeking that propelled big-brained Homo sapiens into the space age.
From Nature ● Jan. 27, 2020
Others are covered in rows or tufts of tiny cilia that they coordinately beat to swim—typically paramecium.
From Textbooks ● Jan. 1, 2015
Strip malls line the town’s highways like paramecium.
From Salon ● Mar. 13, 2014
Fadi felt like a hairy single-celled paramecium, immobilized under a microscope, squashed between two plates of glass.
From "Shooting Kabul" by N. H. Senzai
For example, paramecia and amoebas, which are protists that lack cell walls, have contractile vacuoles.
From Textbooks ● Jun. 9, 2022
Classical genetics took some punishment from Professor T. M. Sonneborn of Indiana University, who headed a symposium on paramecia.
From Time Magazine Archive
Roskin proceeded to test the serum of cancerous rabbits, then of human patients, found to his delight that when properly prepared, it was highly toxic to paramecia.
From Time Magazine Archive
He put sensitive paramecia into a solution of mashed killer paramecia.
From Time Magazine Archive
In the boiling water the frankfurters swished and lashed like artificially colored and magnified paramecia.
From "A Confederacy of Dunces" by John Kennedy Toole
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.
