Photosynthesizers

Part of speech: noun

Definitions

1. Living things such as plants, algae and some bacteria that make food from sunlight, water and carbon dioxide ; apparatus or materials that turn light into chemical energy
2. Organisms able to capture light and transform it into sugars through chemical reactions ; machines or compounds that harness illumination to produce usable energy
3. Plants and microbes that convert solar energy into nourishment for themselves ; engineered systems that take in light and store it as chemical power

Etymology: Photosynthesizers are the organisms that carry out photosynthesis, and the plural simply pluralises the agent noun "photosynthesizer". That noun is built from "photosynthesize" with the suffix "-er", which in English has long meant "one who does" the action named by the base. The "-er" ending traces back through Middle English "-er" and Old French "-ier" to Latin "-arius", a suffix that marked a person connected with or performing something, and Old English "-ere" shows the same ending in native words such as "baker" and "hunter". The base "photosynthesize" joins two Greek elements: "phōs", meaning light, and "synthesis", meaning putting together. The compound describes the process by which light energy is used to combine simple substances into organic matter. Because the word is a modern scientific formation built from these classical parts, the "-ize" and "-er" endings were attached in English rather than inherited from ancient Greek usage.

Synonyms: phototroph

Antonyms: heterotroph