fissiparous
Language: English
Part of speech: adj
Pronunciation: ipa: /fɪˈsɪpəɹəs/
Forms: form: more fissiparous
form: most fissiparous
Etymology: An adaptation of New Latin fissiparus, from fissus (“split, cleft”) + pariō (“I bring forth”) by analogy with vīviparus.
Senses: examples: text: That nation, inescapably, is Germany, the largest, richest, most important, perhaps most admirable and certainly most pivotal nation in the European Union, the nation around which a flourishing Europe will always centre and the nation upon which a fissiparous Europe always risks foundering.
ref: 2003 December 13, “Leading the new Europe”, in The Guardian:
text: There is no panacea. Iraq is a destroyed and fissiparous country.
ref: 2005 December, Nir Rosen, “If America Left Iraq”, in The Atlantic:
text: Like empires, world orders grow old, fissiparous, complacent and grumpy — despite the Champagne, the thrill is gone.
ref: 2015 January 1, Steven Erlanger, “New Year, Old Problems”, in The New York Times, →ISSN:
synonyms: unstable
glosses: Factious, tending to break into pieces.
examples: text: fissiparous tendencies
text: Was he impressed with the cohesion of the Christians among themselves, and by the contrast thus offered to the fissiparous tendencies of his feudal polity?
ref: 1901, H. F. B. Lynch, Armenia, Travels and Studies, volume 1:
text: The sea was such a link in the case of Greece and her city colonies enabling her (no hostile power having command of the Mediterranean) to maintain connexion with her foreign colonies, in spite of the fissiparous influence of her physical configuration on the mainland.
ref: 1907, George Curzon, Frontiers:
text: The term, which means having the quality of reproducing by splitting, was first used in the national context by the founding Prime Minister of India, Jawaharlal Nehru, who warned that “fissiparous tendencies” might someday shatter the Indian union.
ref: 1980 August 9, Michael T. Kaufmans, quoting Jawaharlal Nehru, “Tribal Revolts in India Revive Old Fears of Breakup”, in The New York Times, →ISSN:
text: After ­spending 1,000 words establishing that he's the only person in Britain who refers to ­Massive Attack as "the Massives", he ­finally let fly with the what-did-you-have-for-lunch-mate-dictionary-­pudding? stuff he had presumably been employed for: "The Massives have always had a certain fissiparous approach to their work as an ensemble" and so on.
ref: 2010 February 4, Alexis Petridis, quoting Will Self, “Massive Attack: Heligoland”, in The Guardian:
synonyms: divisive
fragmenting
glosses: Causing division or fragmenting something.
examples: text: Reproduction may be divided into two main classes, namely, sexual and asexual. The latter is effected in many ways—by the formation of buds of various kinds, and by fissiparous generation, that is by spontaneous or artificial division.
ref: 1868, Charles Darwin, “Provisional Hypothesis of Pangenesis”, in The Variation of Animals and Plants Under Domestication. […], volume II, London: John Murray, […], →OCLC, part I, page 358:
topics: biology
cytology
medicine
natural-sciences
sciences
glosses: Of cells that reproduce through fission, splitting into two.
Coordinate terms: oviparous
multiparous
nulliparous
viviparous
ovoviviparous
Derived terms: fissiparously
fissiparousness
Related terms: fissile
fissiparism
fissiparity