mutant
/ˈmjuːt(ə)nt
/adjective
Resulting from or showing the effect of mutation: a mutant gene...
- In other words, are rescue genes mutant alleles of the genes that normally kill hybrids?
- The gene function is known in four cases, based on mutant phenotypes.
- I've been 19 for over a day now and I haven't shown any signs of growing a third arm or any other mutant abnormality.
noun
A mutant form: frequently only a small percentage of the offspring of mutants resemble their parents...
- Let me explain that there are bad mutants and good mutants, just like real people.
- Second, the enzymatic activity for the active site mutants was determined in vitro.
- Similar arguments and requirements apply to mutants created by transposon mutagenesis.
Synonyms
freak, freak of nature, deviant, oddity, monstrosity, monster, mutation, variant, variation;
Latin lusus naturae
rare miscreation
Origin
Early 20th century: from Latin mutant- 'changing', from the verb mutare.
commute from Late Middle English:
In early use commute meant ‘to interchange two things’. Its source is Latin commutare, from com- ‘together’ and mutare ‘to change’, the root of English words such as moult (Late Middle English), mutant (early 19th century), and permutation (Late Middle English). The modern meaning, ‘to travel between home and your place of work’, comes from commutation ticket. This was the American term for a season ticket, where a number of daily fares were ‘commuted’ to, or changed into, a single payment. The Americans have been commuting since the 1860s, but the term did not make its way over to Britain until the 1930s.