Definitions

from The Century Dictionary.

  • noun An individual or a species of Protozoa; a protozoan.

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

  • noun One of the Protozoa.
  • noun A single zooid of a compound protozoan.

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

  • noun cytology A protozoan.

from WordNet 3.0 Copyright 2006 by Princeton University. All rights reserved.

  • noun any of diverse minute acellular or unicellular organisms usually nonphotosynthetic

Etymologies

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Examples

  • The malarial haematozoon is a protozoon, a very small protozoon since it lives and develops in the red blood cells which in man have a diameter of only 7 microns.

    Alphonse Laveran - Nobel Lecture 1967

  • It is spread from person to person by the bite of the tsetse fly, which carries the protozoon and is famous for that reason.

    The Human Brain Asimov, Isaac 1963

  • Usually the sexual forms develop only in a special environment; thus the protozoon which in man is the cause of malaria, multiplies in the human blood by simple division, but in the body of the mosquito multiplication by sexual differentiation takes place.

    Disease and Its Causes William Thomas Councilman

  • Let us begin our comparative study with an example of the simplest animals that consist of only a single cell, such as the little protozoon

    The Doctrine of Evolution Its Basis and Its Scope Henry Edward Crampton

  • Organic life, we are told, has developed gradually from the protozoon to the philosopher, and this development, we are assured, is indubitably an advance.

    Mysticism and Logic and Other Essays Bertrand Russell 1921

  • Unfortunately it is the philosopher, not the protozoon, who gives us this assurance, and we can have no security that the impartial outsider would agree with the philosopher's self-complacent assumption.

    Mysticism and Logic and Other Essays Bertrand Russell 1921

  • All this being known at the time of Laveran, and the malarial parasite being known to be a protozoon, it would have seemed logical to consider its segmentation in the stroma of the red corpuscle as the phase of scission and to await until the parasite gave place to the sexual forms, which must necessarily come in the phase succeeding scission.

    The Montessori Method Anne E. Montessori George 1912

  • Had anyone, instead, limited himself to reasoning thus: the original form of the malarial insect is a protozoon; it reproduces itself by scission, under our eyes; when the scission is finished, we see two diverse cells; one a half-moon, the other threadlike.

    The Montessori Method Anne E. Montessori George 1912

  • The living being -- protozoon or vertebrate, notwithstanding its differentiation of material parts and manifoldness of structure, is truly one.

    The Catholic Encyclopedia, Volume 9: Laprade-Mass Liturgy 1840-1916 1913

  • This evolution of matter from the protozoon to man, announced from university chairs as the result of science, was eagerly taken up by the social democrats, and became the fundamental tenet of their conception of the world and of life.

    The Catholic Encyclopedia, Volume 10: Mass Music-Newman 1840-1916 1913

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