Wiktionary

autochthonous

English edit

WOTD – 5 November 2007

Etymology edit

Literally, “native to the soil”; from autochthon +‎ -ous.

Pronunciation edit

Adjective edit

autochthonous (not comparable)

  1. Native to the place where found; indigenous.
    • 1889, Justin Winsor, Narrative and Critical History of America, volume I, page 375:
      Two of the most celebrated of the evolutionists reject the autochthonous view, for Darwin's Descent of Man and Haeckel's Hist. of Creation consider the American man an emigrant from the old world, whatever way the race may have developed
    • 1968, Joseph Campbell, The Hero with a Thousand Faces, 2nd edition, London: Fontana Press, published 1993, page 16:
      "Forms or images of a collective nature which occur practically all over the earth as constituents of myths and at the same time as autochthonous, individual products of unconscious origin" (C. G. Jung, Psychology and Religion [Collected Works, vol. 11; New York and London, 1958], par. 88.)
    • 1983, Isaac Asimov, chapter 22, in The Robots of Dawn, Bantam Books, →ISBN, page 116:
      Only human beings could live on this world and know that they were not autochthonous but had stemmed from Earthmen—and yet did the Spacers really know it or did they simply put it out of their mind?
  2. (biology, medicine) Originating where found; found where it originates.
    • 1983, Journal of the Medical Society of New Jersey, volume 80, page 538:
      When, in 1858, Joseph Lister amputated the right leg of a six-year-old girl suffering from gangrene, he noted that the autochthonous blood clot extended down the anterior tibial artery as far as the commencement of the gangrene.
  3. (geology) Buried in place, especially of a fossil preserved in its life position without disturbance or disarticulation.
    • 1992, Anna K. Behrensmeyer et al., Terrestrial Ecosystems Through Time, page 83:
      Death and burial may be simultaneous, resulting in a preserved snapshot of an autochthonous assemblage that may be compared directly with present day ecosystems.

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