Anaerobiosis

Part of speech: noun

Definitions

1. The condition or process of living and growing in an environment lacking oxygen
2. The state in which organisms or cells survive and reproduce without the presence of oxygen
3. A mode of existence characterized by biological activity occurring in the absence of oxygen

Etymology: Anaerobiosis is a technical coinage built from parts that already existed: "an-", a prefix meaning "without" borrowed from Greek, attached to "aerobiosis", which itself combines "aero-" (air, from Greek "aēr") with "-biosis" (a way of living, from Greek "bios"). Read literally, the word describes life conducted without air, a sense that fits the biologists who needed a precise term for organisms that survive without free oxygen. The chain runs through "aerobiosis" first, so the new word is a negated version of an existing term rather than an independent creation. Because the prefix and the Greek roots are old, the word looks ancient, but it belongs to modern scientific vocabulary, coined to name a process that could only be described once researchers understood how oxygen-dependent and oxygen-free forms of life differed.