The building blocks of English

Affixes

meio-

Also mio‑.

Less or fewer.

Greek meiōn, less or smaller.

Meiosis is cell division that results in two daughter cells each with half the chromosome number of the parent cell; meiofauna are minute animals living in soil and aquatic sediments; meiobenthos (Greek benthos, depth of the sea) are small organisms living at the bottom of the sea.

Mio‑ is an alternative spelling, as in Miocene (Greek kainos, new, so literally ‘the lesser new [period]’), relating to the fourth epoch of the Tertiary period, between the Oligocene and Pliocene epochs; or miogeoclinal (less often miogeosynclinal), of a geosyncline that is situated between a larger, volcanic one and a stable area of the crust.

The medical term miosis for an excessive constriction of the pupil of the eye comes instead from Greek muein, to shut the eyes.