heterogeny
(hɛtəˈrɒdʒɪnɪ)
[mod. f. Gr. type *ἑτερογενεία, abstr. n. from ἑτερογενής heterogene; or, in 3, from hetero- + -γενεια birth.]
† I. 1. Heterogeneousness. Obs.
| 1647 Husbandman's Plea agst. Tithes 67 There is no hetrogeny or disparitie in the matter. |
2. concr. A heterogeneous assemblage.
| 1838 Hawthorne Amer. Note-bks. (1883) 158 Sometimes he would put up a heterogeny of articles in a lot..and knock them all down, perhaps for ninepence. 1921 S.P.E. Tract v. 10 We find a heterogeny of words in use. 1927 Sunday Express 29 May 5/1 Every conceivable kind of article which forms the heterogeny of the shops patronised by women. |
II. 3. Biol. a. Production of living beings from substances organic or inorganic without germs or ovules; spontaneous generation.
| 1863 Darwin in Life & Lett. (1887) III. 20, I have written a letter..to say, under the cloak of attacking Heterogeny, a word in my own defence. 1871 Proc. Amer. Phil. Soc. XII. 313 No better case has ever been made out for heterogeny than by Charlton Bastian. 1886 Syd. Soc. Lex., Heterogeny,..also the production of a living being from the substance of a living being of some other kind; as in the supposed development of maggots from the substance of putrefying flesh. |
b. Alternation of generations, esp. of a sexual and a parthenogenetic generation.
| 1886 W. E. Hoyle tr. Leuckart's Parasites of Man 25 The theory of the heterogeny of Entozoa. Ibid. 96, I have for some time been accustomed to call such an alternate succession of dimorphous sexual generations by the name ‘Heterogeny’. 1889 E. B. Poulton et al. tr. Weismann's Ess. Heredity 325 In the Daphnidae, heterogeny may pass into pure parthenogenesis by the non-appearance of the sexual generations. 1931 Blacklock & Southwell Guide Human Parasitol. xii. 105 Where one egg produces more than one adult, asexual multiplication has obviously followed the sexual multiplication, i.e. alternation of generations, or heterogeny, exists. 1946 B. Dawes Trematoda xiv. 501 Heterogeny, namely, the alternation of a parthenogenetic with a sexual generation. |