Octoploid

Part of speech: adjective

Definitions

1. Referring to organisms that possess eight complete sets of chromosomes, this term highlights a specific genetic structure
2. Characterizing a genetic condition where an organism contains eight complete sets of chromosomes
3. Describes an organism with eight full chromosome sets in its cells

Etymology: "Octoploid" is a plain technical coinage, built from "octo-", from Greek "oktō" meaning "eight", and the suffix "-ploid", which itself comes from "-ploos", the Greek element meaning "-fold" that gives us words like "diploid" and "haploid". Put together, the word means having eight-fold sets of chromosomes, a sense that ties it directly to the number of copies of each chromosome in a cell. The Greek "oktō" is a descendant of an ancient Indo-European number word that also gave Latin "octō", which is why English has a set of eight-based terms such as "octagon" and "October" that look similar. "Octoploid" is not an ancient word, though. It was assembled in English from these classical building blocks to describe the genetic structure of organisms, following the modern study of chromosome numbers in cells, so the Greek and Latin parts are ancient while the word as a whole is a scientific creation.

Synonyms: eight-fold, octovalent