Dictionary

syncytial en · ADJ

Pronunciation

• /sɪnˈsɪʃ.(i.)əl/ (General-American)
• /sɪnˈsɪt.i.əl/ (Received-Pronunciation)
• /sɪnˈsɪʃ.əl/ (Received-Pronunciation)

Etymology

From syncyti(um) + -al.

Meanings

1. Of or pertaining to a syncytium.
   • The vaccine would be the first to protect babies from respiratory syncytial virus, or R.S.V., which is the reason many infants are admitted to children’s hospitals each year and kills several hundred under 5 each year. 2023 May 18, Christina Jewett, “F.D.A. Panel Recommends R.S.V. Vaccine to Protect Young Infants”, in The New York Times, archived from the original on 18 May 2023:
   • In more syncytial areas, tumour cells have plump cell bodies and rounded nuclei, which may show deep invaginations. 1986, Timothy H. Moss, Tumours of the Nervous System, Springer, page 85:
   • The cytoplasmic borders of intermediate cells are sometimes sharply demarcated, notably so in areas where cells are less cohesive; however, often the cells have a more syncytial arrangement in which individual borders can be appreciated only with difficulty. 2013, Nisheet Anant Agni, Rajiv Mukund Borle, Salivary Gland Pathologies, Jaypee Brothers Medical Publishers, page 135:
   • The epithelium, however, in many regions has a more syncytial appearance due to loss of cell boundaries. 1906, Robert T. Frank, “Chorionepitheliomatous Proliferation in Teratomata”, in George H. Simmons, editor, Journal of the American Medical Association, Volume 46, American Medical Association, page 254:
2. Characterized by interdependence and a sense of mutual identity.
   • This corresponds to the Dionysian model, in which experience is syncretic and ambiguous, communication is immediate, relationship is fusional, sociability is syncytial and participative (see endnote 3), and mental processes are nonrepresentational, but simply experiential. 2018, Earl Hopper, Haim Weinberg, The Social Unconscious in Persons, Groups, and Societies:
   • The natural death of a single member is perceived as a collective catastrophe; a maiming would is inflected on the body of all members of the group who are not willing to be separated from him, but fear being dragged to death with him. The syncytial group both denies and works through death in their own way: it transforms death, from a natural and individual event passively endured, into a collective and cultural event controlled by ritual. 2012, Joan Offerman-Zuckerberg, Politics and Psychology: Contemporary Psychodynamic Perspectives:
   • It was a process that had begun in ancient times, with the institution of the sacred king/double of the people in a social body which was much more syncytial (and therefore more exposed to self-destruction) than the one represented by the consciousness of the Tudor age. 2018, Domenico A. Nesci, Revisiting Jonestown, Rowman & Littlefield (Lexington Books), page 57:

Forms

Deriveds

syncytialization · syncytiality · presyncytial · respiratory syncytial virus · syncytialized · syncytially

Relateds

multinucleate · multinuclear · polynuclear · polynucleate

Synonyms

syncytical

Translations (3)

pt sincicial (of or pertaining to a syncytium) · de synzytial (of or pertaining to a syncytium) · fr syncytial (of or pertaining to a syncytium)