poly-

1. Pertaining to the delivery of many offspring at one birth; multiparous: In her biology class at school, Amy learned about polytocous childbirth and the causes of such partitions.
2. Concerning vegetation producing flowers or fruit many times during its life cycle: Perennials are considered to be polytocous plants that have blossoms repeatedly.

An excessive growth of the hair on a person: Mr. Timmons had a condition of polytrichia and was thickly covered with hair, especially in comparison with other people of the same race and sex.

1. A reference to obtaining nourishment from a variety of organic material; A polytrophic form of certain bacteria is exemplified in the way they get their nutrition from multiple kinds of food.
2. Referring to an attraction, trophism, for multiple organs: A polytrophic action is usually used for a virus which affects multiple organ systems.

1. Feeding on a variety of different food substances or food species.
2. In pathology, marked by or pertaining to excessive nutrition.

Relating to long-chain carbon compounds; especially, fats, having many unsaturated bonds.

Excessive urination, as in some diseases.

A descriptive term for the excretion of an abnormally large quantity of urine.

An obsolete term for minute water colonial invertebrates; bryozoan: Polyzoans are animals that form branching, mosslike colonies, and reproduce by budding.

Concerning an organism composed of various zooids: A polyzoic lifeform has many motile cells or bodies, like a tapeworm, that typically divide into proglottids that consistently shed into the surrounding area to infect other animals.

Emotionally induced excessive water drinking at night.

Excessive fluid consumption resulting from a disorder of the personality, without any demonstrable organic lesion (pathological or traumatic discontinuity of tissue or loss of the function of a body part).

An instrument whereby several people can listen to the sounds transmitted through a stethoscope.