Inbreeds

Part of speech: verb

Definitions

1. Generating offspring through mating between closely related individuals
2. Referring to the practice of breeding animals or plants within a limited gene pool to establish certain traits
3. Describing a group or population that has become genetically uniform due to breeding among relatives

Etymology: "Inbreeds" is the third-person singular form of "inbreed," and the verb is simply a compound of "in-" and "breed." The "breed" half traces back through Old English "brēdan," meaning to bring forth young or to nurse, to Proto-Germanic "brōdijaną," a derivative of the noun "brōduz," meaning a brood or offspring, which in turn descends from the same Indo-European root that gave Latin "fovere," to warm or cherish. So the core idea of the word is tending to young, long before it came to mean producing them. The "in-" prefix, inherited from Old English, adds the sense of mating within a group, so that "inbreed" describes breeding inside a closed line of relatives. Because the compound is transparent, the word needs little decoding: each part keeps its ordinary meaning, and the combination simply names the practice of keeping a bloodline within itself.

Synonyms: interbreeds, crossbreeds, mixes, marries, hybridizes

Antonyms: outbreeds, diversifies, cross-pollinates, varies, separates