emboîtement
English edit
Etymology edit
From French emboîtement.
Noun edit
emboîtement (uncountable)
- (biology, now historical) The outdated hypothesis that all living things proceed from pre-existing germs, and that these encase the germs of all future living things, enclosed one within another.
- 1997, Roy Porter, The Greatest Benefit to Mankind, Folio Society, published 2016, page 217:
- [R]ivals professed to see an equivalent in the semen, giving rise to the ‘preformation’ or emboîtement theories which contended that the new individual was completely developed as a tiny homunculus from the moment of conception.
French edit
Etymology edit
From emboîter (“to fit together”) + -ment.
Pronunciation edit
Noun edit
emboîtement m (plural emboîtements)
Further reading edit
- “emboîtement”, in Trésor de la langue française informatisé [Digitized Treasury of the French Language], 2012.