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Affixes: the building blocks of English
Affixes: the building blocks of English
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oo- Also oö-.

An egg or ovum.

[Greek ōion, egg.]

Terms are mainly specialist ones in biology, such as oocyte (Greek kutos, vessel), a cell in an ovary which may undergo meiotic division to form an ovum; oogamous (Greek gonos, generation), relating to or denoting reproduction by the union of mobile male and immobile female gametes; ootheca (Greek thēkē, receptacle), the egg case of cockroaches, mantises, and related insects. However, it also occurs in geology in reference to egg-shaped masses, as in oolite (Greek lithos, stone), a limestone consisting of a mass of rounded grains (ooliths) made up of concentric layers. The form may occasionally be seen written with a dieresis (oö-) to indicate that the two vowels are pronounced separately: oögamous, oölite. See also ovi-.

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