Word Pronunciation & Dictionary

kairomone

/ˈkaɪɹəˌmoʊn/

Word Rarity Very rare

Frequency: Zipf frequency 0.00 in modern English

Syllables: kai-ro-mone
IPA: /ˈkaɪɹəˌmoʊn/

15

Scrabble Score

9

Letters

3

Syllables

8

Unique Chars

Meaning

noun

Any substance produced by an individual of one species (often an insect) that benefits the recipient which is of a different species but is harmful to the producer.

Example Sentences

"Among these substances, we propose to designate two major functional groupings by the terms allomone and kairomone, chosen as intentional parallels to the term pheromone."
"Host‐finding by the parasitic wasp Orgilus lepidus, a braconid parasite, is mediated by two kairomones present in the frass of the host insect, the potato tuberworm."
"Mutillids apparently use odour signals (kairomones) while actively running in suitable locations for finding such hosts, and must spend much time searching, with little prospect of finding numerous hosts."

Etymology

Blend of Ancient Greek καιρός (kairós, “advantage; profit”, noun) + English pheromone, coined in the 1970 article “Allomones and Kairomones: Transspecific Chemical Messengers” by the American geneticist William Lacy Brown, Jr. (1913–1991), the German-American ecologist and entomologist Thomas Eisner (1929–2011), and the American ecologist Robert Harding Whittaker (1920–1980) which was published in BioScience: see the quotation.

Regional Pronunciation

American English: /ˈkaɪɹəˌmoʊn/
British English: /ˈkaɪɹə(ʊ)məʊn/

Inflected Forms

kairomones (plural)

Derived Forms

kairomonal

Frequently Paired Words

allomone apneumone pheromone synomone

Questions

How do you pronounce kairomone?: The recorded pronunciation is /ˈkaɪɹəˌmoʊn/.
What does kairomone mean?: Any substance produced by an individual of one species (often an insect) that benefits the recipient which is of a different species but is harmful to the producer.
Where does kairomone come from?: Blend of Ancient Greek καιρός (kairós, “advantage; profit”, noun) + English pheromone, coined in the 1970 article “Allomones and Kairomones: Transspecific Chemical Messengers” by the American geneticist William Lacy Brown, Jr. (1913–1991), the German-American ecologist and entomologist Thomas Eisner (1929–2011), and the American ecologist Robert Harding Whittaker (1920–1980) which was published in BioScience: see the quotation.

How to pronounce kairomone

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