Definitions

from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 5th Edition.

  • adjective Biology Having or occurring in three differing forms.
  • adjective Chemistry Crystallizing in three distinct forms.

from The Century Dictionary.

  • Same as trimorphous.

from the GNU version of the Collaborative International Dictionary of English.

  • adjective Of, pertaining to, or characterized by, trimorphism; -- contrasted with monomorphic, dimorphic, and polymorphic.

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License.

  • adjective zoology Having three different forms with a clear attribute amongst three animals of the same species.
  • adjective botany Having three different forms of flowers, leaves, or any other attribute on the same plant.
  • adjective The condition of having three different forms.

Etymologies

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License

tri- + -morphic

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Examples

  • Not until men entered that closed system could humans escape biology by becoming the psychologically trimorphic family: mother-father-baby.

    Archive 2007-03-01 Mike L 2007

  • Not until men entered that closed system could humans escape biology by becoming the psychologically trimorphic family: mother-father-baby.

    Vertical Memes and Horizontal Genes Mike L 2007

  • The flowers are trimorphic with long, short or mid-length styles.

    Chapter 24 1987

  • If Natural Selection could not accumulate varying degrees of sterility for the plant's benefit, then how did sterility ever come to be associated with _one cross_ of a trimorphic plant rather than another?

    Alfred Russel Wallace: Letters and Reminiscences, Vol. 1 James Marchant

  • The groundwork of the acquirement of such peculiar fertility (for what you say about any other distinct individual being, as it would appear, sufficient, is very true) rests on the stamens and pistil having varied first in relative length, _as actually occurs_ irrespective of dimorphism, and the peculiar kind of fertility characteristic of dimorphic and the trimorphic plants having been

    Alfred Russel Wallace: Letters and Reminiscences, Vol. 1 James Marchant

  • To Sprengel, and specially to Darwin, physiologists are indebted for the demonstration of the relation of di - and trimorphic flowers to fertilisation.

    Vegetable Teratology An Account of the Principal Deviations from the Usual Construction of Plants Maxwell T. Masters

  • The same excellent observer has demonstrated that the di - and trimorphic forms of _Primula_, of _Linum_, _Lythrum_, and other plants -- forms differing mainly in the relative length of the stamens and styles, are also connected with striking differences in the number of perfect seeds produced.

    Vegetable Teratology An Account of the Principal Deviations from the Usual Construction of Plants Maxwell T. Masters

  • If Natural Selection could not accumulate varying degrees of sterility for the plant's benefit, then how did sterility ever come to be associated with one cross of a trimorphic plant rather than another?

    Alfred Russel Wallace Letters and Reminiscences Marchant, James 1916

  • The groundwork of the acquirement of such peculiar fertility (for what you say about any other distinct individual being, as it would appear, sufficient, is very true) rests on the stamens and pistil having varied first in relative length, as actually occurs irrespective of dimorphism, and the peculiar kind of fertility characteristic of dimorphic and the trimorphic plants having been secondarily acquired.

    Alfred Russel Wallace Letters and Reminiscences Marchant, James 1916

  • The facts given on the sterility of the illegitimate unions of dimorphic and trimorphic plants and of their illegitimate progeny, perhaps render it probable that some unknown bond in all cases connects the degree of fertility of first unions with that of their offspring.

    IX. Hybridism. Summary of Chapter 1909

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