parasite

Definition

An organism that lives on or in another organism of a different species, deriving benefit from living on or in that other organism, while not contributing towards that other organism sufficiently to cover the cost to that other organism.

Etymology

From Middle French parasite, from Latin parasitus, from Ancient Greek παράσιτος (parásitos, “person who eats at the table of another”), from noun use of adjective meaning "feeding beside", from παρά (pará, “beside”) + σῖτος (sîtos, “food”).

Example Sentences

• "Lice, fleas, ticks, and mites are widely spread parasites."
• "...and the mistletoe crept round many of the oaks—that pleasant parasite, whose associations belong rather to the hearth and lighted hall than to its native branches."
• "It is likely that the long evolutionary trajectory of Mycoplasma went from a reductive autotroph to oxidative heterotroph to a cell-wall–defective degenerate parasite. This evolutionary trajectory assumes the simplicity to complexity route of biogenesis, a point of view that is not universally accepted."

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