Definitions

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

  • noun Any of various one-celled flagellate freshwater green algae of the genus Volvox that form hollow mucilaginous spherical colonies of several hundred cells.

from The Century Dictionary.

  • noun A small genus of fresh-water algæ, of the order Volrocineæ and class Cœnobieæ.
  • noun [lowercase] A member of the above genus: as, the globate volvox.

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

  • noun (Bot.) A genus of minute, pale-green, globular, organisms, about one fiftieth of an inch in diameter, found rolling through water, the motion being produced by minute colorless cilia. It has been considered as belonging to the flagellate Infusoria, but is now referred to the vegetable kingdom, and each globule is considered a colony of many individuals. The commonest species is Volvox globator, often called globe animalcule.

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

  • noun zoology Any of the genus Volvox of chlorophytes.

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

  • noun type genus of the Volvocaceae; minute pale green flagellates occurring in tiny spherical colonies; minute flagella rotate the colony about an axis

Etymologies

from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 4th Edition

[New Latin Volvox, genus name, from Latin volvere, to roll; see wel- in Indo-European roots.]

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License

From the genus name.

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Examples

Comments

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  • Uselessness, I think this one ought to go on your list of No-nos. :-)

    March 13, 2007

  • Ugh. True dat!!

    March 13, 2007