submicroscopic

[ suhb-mahy-kruh-skop-ik ]

adjective

1. too small to be seen through a microscope.

submicroscopic

/ ˌsʌbmaɪkrəˈskɒpɪk /

adjective

1. too small to be seen through an optical microscope

Derived Forms

• ˌsubmicroˈscopically, adverb

Other Words From

• submi·cro·scopi·cal·ly adverb

Word History and Origins

Origin of submicroscopic¹

sub- + microscopic

Example Sentences

She and her colleagues have previously used such an approach to view submicroscopic shapes like letters or stars.

From Science Daily

This dramatic shift, with the world’s biggest drug companies racing to dominate a potential multibillion-dollar market and defeat a virus that causes 58,000 hospitalizations of children younger than 5 in the United States each year, started with a seminal, submicroscopic discovery in 2013.

From Washington Post

In a 1982 paper, he, Dr. Turner and Paul Steinhardt of Princeton described how submicroscopic fluctuations in the density of matter and energy in the early universe would grow and give rise to the pattern of galaxies we see in the sky today.

From New York Times

At the Duke University School of Medicine, researchers were trying to create a booster shot and discovered, to their surprise, that their vaccine — a bit of the coronavirus spike protein assembled on a submicroscopic scaffold called a ferritin nanoparticle — generated antibodies that could protect against other coronaviruses, including bat viruses and the original SARS.

From Washington Post

The esoteric theory describing the behavior of particles on the submicroscopic scale rewrites the rules of normal reality we are accustomed to, substituting probability for certainty.

From Scientific American