homunculus

[ huh-muhng-kyuh-luhs, hoh- ]

noun

, plural ho·mun·cu·li [h, uh, -, muhng, -ky, uh, -lahy, hoh-].

1. an artificially made dwarf, supposedly produced in a flask by an alchemist.
2. a fully formed, miniature human body believed, according to some medical theories of the 16th and 17th centuries, to be contained in the spermatozoon.
3. a diminutive human being.
4. the human fetus.

homunculus

/ hɒˈmʌŋkjʊləs /

noun

1. a miniature man; midget
2. (in early biological theory) a fully-formed miniature human being existing in a spermatozoon or egg

Derived Forms

• hoˈmuncular, adjective

Other Words From

• ho·muncu·lar adjective

Word History and Origins

Origin of homunculus¹

1650–60; < Latin, equivalent to homun- (variant of homin-, stem of homō man; Homo ) + -culus -cule ¹

Word History and Origins

Origin of homunculus¹

C17: from Latin, diminutive of homo man

Example Sentences

In my first neuroscience course at Columbia University, I learned about the homunculus.

From Scientific American

Later three-dimensional representations of the homunculus depict it as a grotesque, hairless goblin with enormous lips, hands and feet.

From Scientific American

As a student and later as a practitioner in the field, I had accepted the homunculus as unquestioned fact.

From Scientific American

The problem started when I was trying to decide how much to trust a new method for cleaning up imaging data and had asked to conduct what I thought was a routine test of its validity by checking the connections in the area of the homunculus that corresponded to the hand.

From Scientific American

We went on to reexamine our own prior work, pulled in all potentially relevant data sets we could get our hands on, conducted new experiments and reexamined the published evidence for and against the homunculus story, going back to the early 1900s.

From Scientific American

Related Words

• gnome
• goblin
• gremlin
• hobgoblin
• troll