Tropism is the turning or bending of an organism in response to an external stimulus.
Tropism es el giro o la flexión de un organismo en respuesta a un estímulo externo.
| Front | tropism \TRO-piz-uhm\ |
|---|---|
| Back | noun The turning or bending (typically by growth instead of movement) of an organism in response to an external stimulus. [From Greek tropos (turning). Ultimately from Indo-European root trep- (to turn) that also gave us troubadour, tropic, entropy, and contrive. The term is usually applied to plants. The response to a stimulus could be positive or negative: towards or away from the stimulus. Some examples of stimuli are light (phototropism), gravity (geotropism), heat (thermotropism), touch (thigmotropism), and water (hydrotropism). The word tropism is related to trope, the term for rhetorical devices such as metaphor and irony. The idea is that the words in those rhetorical devices are turned in a special way.] "The traits [Judith Miller] has drive many reporters at The Times crazy: her tropism toward powerful men, her frantic intensity, and her peculiar mixture of hard work and hauteur." - Maureen Dowd; Woman of Mass Destruction; The New York Times; Oct 22, 2005. |
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