macronucleus
noun
macronucleus is a noun meaning “The larger of the two nuclei present in ciliate protozoans; it controls the nonreproductive functions of the cell” (English Wiktionary, September 2026). It is spelled M-A-C-R-O-N-U-C-L-E-U-S, and it appears about once in every 79 million words in written English (wordfreq, 2021 data). The plural of macronucleus is macronuclei.
What does macronucleus mean?
noun
- 1
The larger of the two nuclei present in ciliate protozoans; it controls the nonreproductive functions of the cell.
Source: English Wiktionary, dump of September 2, 2026 (CC BY-SA 4.0), through kaikki.org (Wiktextract).
Forms of macronucleus
- macronuclei plural
Source: English Wiktionary, dump of September 2, 2026 (CC BY-SA 4.0), through kaikki.org (Wiktextract).
How common is macronucleus?
Macronucleus appears about once in every 79 million words in written English, the 282,993rd 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).
Where does macronucleus come from?
From macro- + nucleus.
Source: English Wiktionary, dump of September 2, 2026 (CC BY-SA 4.0), through kaikki.org (Wiktextract).