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fetus

From Wiktionary, the free dictionary

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See also: foetus and fétus

English

Alternative forms

Etymology

A learned borrowing from Latin fētus (“offspring”). Doublet of fawn.

Pronunciation

Noun

fetus (plural fetuses or fetus or (hypercorrect) feti or (misconstructed) fetii) (American spelling, also Canada, Australia)

  1. An unborn or unhatched vertebrate showing signs of the mature animal.
    • 1963, John W Choate, Henry A. Thiede, University of Rochester School of Medicine and Dentistry, Transcript, Volume 2
      Several feti were removed from every rats' uterus, stripped of their membranes and allowed to lie in the peritoneal cavity connected to the placenta by the umbilical cord and with the placenta still attached to the uterine wall.
  2. A human embryo after the eighth week of gestation.
    The sequence is: molecules in reproductive systems, then gametes, zygotes, morulas, blastocysts, and then fetuses.
    • 2019 January 23, Susan Scutti, “Climate change will affect gender ratio among newborns, scientists say”, in CNN‎:
      Though scientists do not know how stress affects gestation, Fukuda theorizes that the vulnerability of Y-bearing sperm cells, male embryos and/or male fetuses to stress is why “subtle significant changes in sex ratios” occur. […] The factors that filter out who “gets through” from conception to birth include chromosomal or genetic abnormalities of the fetus or the mother’s stress response to changes in her environment, Catalano said.
  3. (archaic) A neonate.
    • 1959 [1689], John Locke, chapter 6, in An Essay Concerning Human Understanding, vol. 2, New York, N.Y.: Dover Publications, Inc., page 77:
      The real essence of that or any other sort of substances, it is evident, we know not; and therefore are so undetermined in our nominal essences, which we make ourselves, that, if several men were to be asked concerning some oddly-shaped fœtus, as soon as born, whether it were a man or no, it is past doubt one should meet with different answers.

Usage notes

  • The form fetus is the primary spelling in the United States, Canada, Australia, and in the scientific community, whereas foetus is still commonly used in the United Kingdom and some other Commonwealth nations.
  • The nominative and accusative plural of fētus in Latin is fētūs with lengthened second vowel. The hypercorrect plurals feti and fetii are thus comparable to the hypercorrect plural octopi of octopus (the Ancient Greek plural of octopus is octopodes).

Derived terms

Translations

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