splice
/ˈsplaɪ̯s/
Word Rarity
Rare
Frequency: Zipf frequency 2.87 in modern English
10
Scrabble Score
6
Letters
1
Syllables
6
Unique Chars
Meaning
noun
The electrical and mechanical connection between two pieces of wire or cable.
noun
Bonding or joining of overlapping materials.
noun
The process of removing intron sequences from the pre-messenger RNA, and then joining together exons.
verb
To unite, as two ropes, or parts of a rope, by a particular manner of interweaving the strands, the union being between two ends, or between an end and the body of a rope.
Example Sentences
- "If the ball hits the splice, it is likely to dolly up for an easy catch."
- "But come, it's getting dreadful late, you had better be turning flukes--it's a nice bed; Sal and me slept in that ere bed the night we were spliced."
- "Ah! thinkin’ o’ gettin’ spliced, you two?"
- "He argues against attempts to splice different genres or species of literature into a single composition."
Etymology
Circa 1525, borrowed from Middle Dutch splissen (Modern Dutch splitsen); akin to Middle Dutch splitten (“to split”), German spleißen (“to split, splice”), Spliss (“split ends, hair breakage”), French épisser (also from Dutch). The Dutch word originally referred only to the fraying of the ropes' ends but was then also used for the entire process of fraying and retying; hence the peculiar semantic development from “split” to “join”. The same development occurred in German.
Word Breakdown
- Root: splissen
Regional Pronunciation
- American English: /ˈsplaɪ̯s/
- British English: /ˈsplaɪ̯s/