diapause
noun
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Diapause, from the Greek word diapausis, meaning "pause," may have been coined by the entomologist William Wheeler in 1893. Wheeler's focus was insects, but diapause, a spontaneous period of suspended animation that seems to happen in response to adverse environmental conditions, also occurs in the development of crustaceans, snails, and other animals. Exercising poetic license, novelist Joyce Carol Oates even gave the word a human application in her short story "Visitation Rights" (1988): "Her life, seemingly in shambles, ... was not ruined; ... injured perhaps, and surely stunted, but only temporarily. There had been a diapause, and that was all...."
Examples of diapause in a Sentence
Courtney McGinnis, The Conversation, 30 Apr. 2025
Obligate diapause solves this by ensuring that the whole population goes dormant just before pupation, the final transformation from larva to adult.
—Cody Cottier, Discover Magazine, 8 Mar. 2025
Some mammal species have an ability known as embryonic diapause, in which the development of an embryo can be paused for weeks or even months, keeping the blastocyst from implanting in the uterus.
—Michael Irving, New Atlas, 3 Oct. 2024
As the day get shorter in light, flies should enter diapause.
—Erin Couch, The Enquirer, 8 Sep. 2024
The aquarium clarified in a statement last month that Charlotte may not have been pregnant to begin with, but rather suffered from a reproductive disease known as diapause.
—Jeff A. Chamer, Charlotte Observer, 1 July 2024
Scientists were working on a study on bumblebee diapause.
—Popular Science Staff, Popular Science, 22 May 2024
The queens then mate and store up a bunch of nutrients before digging down into little burrows in the soil and going into diapause for six to nine months.
—Popular Science Staff, Popular Science, 22 May 2024
The work includes monitoring greenhouse temperatures and humidity, growing and picking food for the caterpillars each day, and early in the year, watching for when the caterpillars awake from diapause.
—Krista Stevens, Longreads, 28 Feb. 2024
Cite this Entry
“Diapause.” Merriam-Webster.com Dictionary, Merriam-Webster, https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/diapause. Accessed 22 May. 2025.
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