-ism, -ismus

1. The absence of orientation movements in response to gravity: When participating in a space flight simulator, the astronaut experienced ageotropism and so he had no sense of responding to gravity.
2. Turning away from the earth: Elena was studying plant ageotropism and so she was growing plants in a gravity-free environment.
3. A part of a plant that would be expected to grow as gravity pulls it down, but instead grows upward, such as the knee roots of cypress trees: Marcella tripped over the ageotropisms of the tree in the swamp because the roots were sticking up out of the earth.

An obsolete term for a condition characterised by a deficiency of red blood cells: Mrs. Thompson had lost quite a lot of vitality and her doctor diagnosed it as being a case of aglobulism with symptoms of anaemia.

1. The disbelief in any claims of ultimate knowledge.
2. The doctrine that certainty about first principles or absolute truth is unattainable and that only perceptual phenomena are objects of exact knowledge.
3. A religious orientation of doubt; a denial of ultimate knowledge of the existence of God: "Agnosticism holds that you can neither prove nor disprove God's existence."

A contention or rivalry for a prize in a contest: Agonism is the condition of a competitive struggle, especially, in the ancient Grecian athletic games or even in a political sense.

A form of aphasia characterized by an inability to construct a grammatical sentence, and the use of unintelligible or incorrect words; caused by a lesion in the dominant temporal lobe.

A movement for the equal division of landed property and for the promotion of agricultural interests: Neal though that agrarianism would be a good thing in that it would promote rural life and agriculture as the foundation of society.

The business of cultivating the soil; tillage; husbandry; farming: Agriculturism includes the related activities of gathering in the crops and rearing livestock..

Any tropism (movement, response) resulting from an exogenous (external) stimulus: Nils read about aitiotropism in his book and realized that this phenomenon could have referred to the situation of the blasting storm that recently destroyed the roof of his garage! .

The state or condition of being an albino: In her studies, Natalie learned about albinism which pertained to all organisms that inherited disorders with deficiency or absence of pigment in the skin, hair, and eyes, or eyes only, due to an abnormality in production of melanin.

Resembling an albino; having the appearance of an albino: At the zoo, the children saw an albinoid tiger for the first time, and its fur was completely white!

1. Chronic alcohol abuse, dependence, or addiction; chronic excessive drinking of alcoholic beverages: Alcoholism results in impairment of health and/or social or occupational functioning, and increasing adaptation to the effects of alcohol requiring increasing doses to achieve and sustain a desired effect. Specific signs and symptoms of withdrawal usually are shown when one stops such drinking.
2. "Alcohol dependence" (currently the preferred term); "alcohol addiction": The terms refer to a variety of disorders associated with alcoholism, the repetitive consumption of alcohol, usually over a long period of time, in amounts that the drinker is unable to handle physiologically, emotionally, or socially.

In lexicolmedy, bourbonic plague: At college, the consumption of distilled whiskey became a kind of endemic among the students, and some students joked about it as being a case of alcoholism

A spontaneous sensation of extreme cold: When algidism happens, a sensation of chilliness is quite noticeable.

The existence of alleles, or their relationship to one another.

The existence, transmission, or inheritance of allelomorphs (one of several alternative forms of a gene).