Definitions

from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 5th Edition.

  • adjective Reproducing by biological fission.
  • adjective Tending to break up into parts or break away from a main body; factious.

from The Century Dictionary.

  • Reproducing or multiplying by fission or spontaneous self-division, a mode of asexual generation by division into two or more parts, each of which, when completely separated, becomes a new individual: it is a usual process among the protozoans, protophytes, and other low organisms. See fission, 2.

from the GNU version of the Collaborative International Dictionary of English.

  • adjective (Biol.) Reproducing by spontaneous fission. See fission.

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License.

  • adjective Factious, tending to break into pieces.
  • adjective Causing division or fragmenting something.
  • adjective biology Of cells that reproduce through fission, splitting into two.

from WordNet 3.0 Copyright 2006 by Princeton University. All rights reserved.

  • adjective reproducing by fission
  • adjective having separated or advocating separation from another entity or policy or attitude

Etymologies

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Examples

  • All error is what physiologists term fissiparous, and in exterminating one false opinion you may be hindering the growth of an uncounted brood of false opinions.

    On Compromise John Morley 1880

  • A legacy of a strong nation unbroken by 'fissiparous' tendencies despite the dire predictions of foreign observers; a nation armed with nuclear weapons and missiles; a nation with the ability to assert an independent foreign policy and independent path of capitalist development, in the main, fully capable of holding its head high in the international community and world economic stage.

    Reality, one bite at a time 2009

  • One year after that he wrote in Earthquakes in London a fissiparous climate-change drama with thinly realised characters among them a glacial female politician which was given an explosive staging by Rupert Goold.

    The Last of the Duchess; 13; The Village Social – review 2011

  • The hope of these minorities is that a fissiparous Pakistan, with its history of dysfunctional civilian and military governments, will give way in the fullness of time to a sprawling Greater India, thus liberating Baluchistan to pursue its destiny as a truly autonomous region.

    Pakistan’s Fatal Shore 2009

  • See, this is exactly why I parted with Protestantism: I could never discern any real desire for unity (which would have been impossible in any case because it is way too fissiparous).

    The Pope offers a personal explanation 2009

  • The sixth and final app was the West's work ethic, which held together the potentially fissiparous society produced by the first five.

    The Birth of the Modern World Brendan Simms 2011

  • [T] he picture that this report paints is one of small, sectarian and chauvinist groupuscules, reproducing in this country the fissiparous and distrustful community loyalties of the subcontinent.

    Young British Muslims at the mercy of extremists because of out-of-touch Imams 2009

  • The hope of these minorities is that a fissiparous Pakistan, with its history of dysfunctional civilian and military governments, will give way in the fullness of time to a sprawling Greater India, thus liberating Baluchistan to pursue its destiny as a truly autonomous region.

    Pakistan’s Fatal Shore 2009

  • The hope of these minorities is that a fissiparous Pakistan, with its history of dysfunctional civilian and military governments, will give way in the fullness of time to a sprawling Greater India, thus liberating Baluchistan to pursue its destiny as a truly autonomous region.

    Pakistan’s Fatal Shore 2009

  • The hope of these minorities is that a fissiparous Pakistan, with its history of dysfunctional civilian and military governments, will give way in the fullness of time to a sprawling Greater India, thus liberating Baluchistan to pursue its destiny as a truly autonomous region.

    Pakistan’s Fatal Shore 2009

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  • See: Iraq

    December 13, 2006