autotomy
/ɔːˈtɒtəmi/noun
autotomy is a noun meaning “The spontaneous removal of a limb, tail etc, especially by some invertebrates as a self-defense mechanism” (English Wiktionary, September 2026). It is spelled A-U-T-O-T-O-M-Y, and it appears about once in every 66 million words in written English (wordfreq, 2021 data). The plural of autotomy is autotomies.
What does autotomy mean?
noun
- 1
The spontaneous removal of a limb, tail etc, especially by some invertebrates as a self-defense mechanism.
Source: English Wiktionary, dump of September 2, 2026 (CC BY-SA 4.0), through kaikki.org (Wiktextract).
How do you pronounce autotomy?
- UK /ɔːˈtɒtəmi/
Source: English Wiktionary, dump of September 2, 2026 (CC BY-SA 4.0), through kaikki.org (Wiktextract). Recordings: LL-Q1860_(eng)-Vealhurl-autotomy.wav, Wikimedia Commons (author and licence on each file's page).
Forms of autotomy
- autotomies plural
Source: English Wiktionary, dump of September 2, 2026 (CC BY-SA 4.0), through kaikki.org (Wiktextract).
How common is autotomy?
Autotomy appears about once in every 66 million words in written English, the 255,765th most frequent word form in the list.
Source: written frequency: wordfreq 3.1 (a 2021 snapshot of Wikipedia, subtitles, news, books, web text and social media).
Autotomy in Spanish, French, German and Portuguese
In the sense invertebrate self-defense mechanism:
Source: English Wiktionary, dump of September 2, 2026 (CC BY-SA 4.0), through kaikki.org (Wiktextract). Translations are Wiktionary's, by sense; a linked word has its own PlainSpell page.
Where does autotomy come from?
From auto- + -tomy, after German Autotomie or French autotomie.
Source: English Wiktionary, dump of September 2, 2026 (CC BY-SA 4.0), through kaikki.org (Wiktextract).