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Metamorphosis   /mˌɛtəmˈɔrfəsəs/   Listen
noun
Metamorphosis  n.  (pl. metamorphoses)  
1.
Change of form, or structure; transformation.
2.
(Biol.) A change in the form or function of a living organism, by a natural process of growth or development; as, the metamorphosis of the yolk into the embryo, of a tadpole into a frog, or of a bud into a blossom. Especially, that form of sexual reproduction in which an embryo undergoes a series of marked changes of external form, as the chrysalis stage, pupa stage, etc., in insects. In these intermediate stages sexual reproduction is usually impossible, but they ultimately pass into final and sexually developed forms, from the union of which organisms are produced which pass through the same cycle of changes. See Transformation.
3.
(Physiol.) The change of material of one kind into another through the agency of the living organism; metabolism.
Vegetable metamorphosis (Bot.), the doctrine that flowers are homologous with leaf buds, and that the floral organs are transformed leaves.






Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48








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"Metamorphosis" Quotes from Famous Books



... Rev. Theron Ware, from the very first moment of waking next morning, that both he and the world had changed over night. The metamorphosis, in the harsh toils of which he had been laboring blindly so long, was accomplished. He stood forth, so to speak, in a new skin, and looked about him, with perceptions of quite an altered kind, upon what seemed in every way a fresh existence. He lacked ...
— The Damnation of Theron Ware • Harold Frederic

... cigar room" of the University Hotel. "On a general Judgment—A new System of communicating Scientific Information in a Tabular form—On the Study of the Law and Medicine—On Apoplexy," and the general business of the University, are very grave matters for little more than 100 pages. "On the Metamorphosis of Plants," by Goethe, is more attractive; but Magazine readers do not want the lumber of law and medicine—the dry material of parchment, or the blood and filth of the physiological chair. How different ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Vol. 14, Issue 394, October 17, 1829 • Various

... confusion at the sight of me, but I was petrified. She was dressed with the utmost elegance, received company admirably, spoke Italian with perfect correctness, talked sensibly, and was exquisitely beautiful; I was stupefied; the metamorphosis ...
— The Memoires of Casanova, Complete • Jacques Casanova de Seingalt

... the fourth edition of the "Origin," which I am glad to see grows so vigorously at each moult, although it undergoes no metamorphosis. How curious it is that Dr. Wells should so clearly have seen the principle of Natural Selection fifty years ago, and that it should have struck no one that it was a great principle ...
— Alfred Russel Wallace: Letters and Reminiscences, Vol. 1 (of 2) • James Marchant

... rests—the particle of dead protein decomposes and disappears—it also rests: but the living protein mass neither tends to exhaustion of its forces nor to any permanency of form, but is essentially distinguished as a disturber of equilibrium so far as force is concerned,—as undergoing continual metamorphosis and ...
— Science & Education • Thomas H. Huxley


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