Metamerous

Part of speech: adjective

Definitions

1. Having a body made up of a series of similar repeated segments, as seen in earthworms and centipedes
2. Describing an organism whose body is composed of many identical or near-identical serial units along its length
3. Consisting of repeated body segments arranged one after another, a feature of many annelids and arthropods

Etymology: "Metamerous" is a technical coinage from zoology and botany, built from Greek roots: "meta" meaning "after" or "beyond" and "meros" meaning "part." Its sense is "having body parts arranged in repeated segments," the way an earthworm or a centipede is built from a series of similar units. The word belongs to the nineteenth-century vocabulary of biological description, when naturalists needed precise terms for body plans. Its relatives include "homonomous," for segments that are alike, and "metameric," the noun-based form used of segmentation itself. Writers in that period coined such words by combining classical elements, so the term does not come from ancient Greek usage. The Greek parts describe the idea, but the word itself is a modern scientific creation.

Synonyms: segmented