Definitions
from The Century Dictionary.
- noun In biology, the supposed influence of a first sire upon the progeny subsequently borne by the mother to other sires. Most breeders are believers in telegony, although careful experiments have failed to show any scientific basis for their opinion.
from the GNU version of the Collaborative International Dictionary of English.
- noun (Biol.) The supposed influence of a father upon offspring subsequent to his own, begotten of the same mother by another father.
from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License.
- noun The belief that in the case of
siblings from the samemother but differentfathers the second sibling couldinherit characteristics from the father of the first
Etymologies
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Examples
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It is called telegony and is, briefly, this: that conception by a female results in a definite modification of her germ-plasm from the influence of the male, and that this modification will be shown in the offspring she may subsequently bear to a second male.
Applied Eugenics Paul Popenoe 1933
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This article from Pedigree Dynamics, Conception and Misconceptions: a lightheaded look at breeding theories of the past (PDF format), tells how, despite scientific acceptance elsewhere of Mendelian genetics, theories such as telegony and 'mental impression' survived in the thoroughbred horse breeding industry well into the 20th century.
Archive 2004-09-01 Ray Girvan 2004
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This article from Pedigree Dynamics, Conception and Misconceptions: a lightheaded look at breeding theories of the past (PDF format), tells how, despite scientific acceptance elsewhere of Mendelian genetics, theories such as telegony and 'mental impression' survived in the thoroughbred horse breeding industry well into the 20th century.
The persistence of poor science Ray Girvan 2004
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Even science was influenced by the old sympathetic magic view that woman could be contaminated by the touch of any other man than her husband, for the principle of telegony, that the father of one child could pass on his characteristics to offspring by other fathers, lingered in biological teaching until the very recent discoveries of the physical basis of heredity in the chromosomes.
Taboo and Genetics A Study of the Biological, Sociological and Psychological Foundation of the Family Melvin Moses Knight 1934
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Pre-natal culture and telegony were found to be mere delusions.
Applied Eugenics Paul Popenoe 1933
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The idea of telegony, the persistent influence of the first mating, may be invoked to explain this discrepancy.
Applied Eugenics Paul Popenoe 1933
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In such a case as the one quoted, the explanation is undoubtedly that the supposed father is not the real one; and this explanation will dispose of all other cases of telegony which can not be explained, as in most instances they can be, by the mixed ancestry of the offspring and the innate tendency of all living things to vary.
Applied Eugenics Paul Popenoe 1933
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The same may be said as to the theory of telegony.
The Catholic Encyclopedia, Volume 7: Gregory XII-Infallability 1840-1916 1913
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And the condition, which supposes that the maternal organism is, so to speak, infected, by the male congress, is called telegony.
The Catholic Encyclopedia, Volume 7: Gregory XII-Infallability 1840-1916 1913
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` ` But it is not only in relation to color that we find telegony to have been noticed in the human subject.
qms commented on the word telegony
This ewe's randy goat was a creep.
He's gone and replaced by a sheep.
If it isn't miscegeny
It must be telegony
Explaining her new kid - the geep.
December 21, 2015