clone
/kloʊn/
Word Rarity
Rare
Frequency: 3.68 in modern English
7
Scrabble Score
5
Letters
1
Syllables
5
Unique Chars
Meaning
noun
A living organism (originally a plant) produced asexually from a single ancestor, to which it is genetically identical.
Example Sentences
- "This new species is a clone of the mimosa plant."
- "[…] each identified blastomere, and the clone of its descendant cells, plays a specific role in later development"
- "The computer manufacturer produced IBM PC clones in the 1990s."
- "Once, on a confident whim, I approached the group of popular girls in an attempt to broaden my circle. Their ringleader took one glance at my new Aeropostale T-shirt and whispered to her clones, “Yeah, Aero's definitely out now.”"
- "Some of me is clone, but a good part of me is still disco."
- "By mid-1983, I had grown weary of reading literature by white gay men who fell, quite easily, into three camps: the incestuous literati of Manhattan and Fire Island, the San Francisco cropped-mustache-clones, and the Boston-to-Cambridge politically correct radical faggots."
Etymology
Coined (in botany) in 1903, based on Ancient Greek κλών (klṓn, “twig”). Figurative use from the 1970s.
Regional Pronunciation
- American English: /kloʊn/
- British English: /kləʊn/