microscopic
/mʌɪkrəˈskɒpɪk
/adjective
1So small as to be visible only with a microscope: microscopic algae...
- Diarrhoea was defined as watery when the patient passed at least three loose stools per day without visible blood or microscopic red blood and polymorphonuclear cells in the specimen.
- To their scientists, the visible snow is only a small part of all the settling material that is mostly microscopic and not visible to the naked eye.
- They feed on microscopic blue green algae plants that only thrive in saline waters.
1.1 informal Extremely small: a microscopic skirt...
- Seriously, it's an extremely small, microscopic number, and he probably won't notice.
- It's an epic, but at the heart of it is an extremely detailed and microscopic view of human nature.
- Is she flipping through a magazine and raving about a microscopic skirt?
1.2Concerned with minute detail: such a vision is as microscopic as his is panoramic...
- With their entire season on the line, Munster would have planned their day in microscopic detail, yet all of their best intentions looked like turning to dust as early as the first 10 minutes.
- Specific, sometimes microscopic, detail is used here, too, in a kind of a cinematic structure cutting back and forth between the two narratives.
- And so, let me take this time to list a few of the many microscopic details that make ordinary day to day living worth it all for me.
2Relating to a microscope: microscopic soil analysis...
- Morphological changes were evaluated by phase-contrast microscopic analysis.
- All slides were coded for microscopic analysis at 1250x magnification.
- Earlier studies on colchicine using conventional microscopic analysis yielded inconclusive results in rat peripheral blood, although clearly positive effects were obtained in the mouse.
Derivatives
microscopical
/ adjectivesense 2. ...- The microscopical parameters that were derived indicated that fundamental properties such as fluidity and water penetration barrier were affected, pointing to how the peptide might exert its antimicrobial activity.
- Light and fluorescent microscopical observation of pollen development in vitro under optimal conditions showed the disappearance of the vacuole, as in vivo.
- Most microscopical techniques capable of imaging isolated supramolecular assemblies require adsorption of the assembly on substrates such as mica or carbon films.
microscopically
/ adverb ...- The research group plans to use the kind of technology used to etch circuits on microchips to create microscopically thin channels on tiny hexagonal glass plates which would be lined with liver cells.
- Stars in the public eye are microscopically picked apart.
- It's the sort of story which a humanitarian journalist would cover, instead of, say, microscopically analysing one remark by a candidate's wife.