Skip to main content
Glite Dictionary
🦠 To live on host 🤑 To exploit 🔌 To draw power
to parasitize

to parasitize

1 8.1
To live in or on another living thing and feed from it
  • verb
  • /ˈpærəˌsaɪtaɪz/
  • Specialized
translation icon : parasitizar
  • The squawroot is a six-inch-tall, stubby plant that, lacking chlorophyll, survives by parasitizing the roots of pines and oaks.
  • wasps that parasitize
  • flies that parasitize
  • moths that parasitize

I mean, I think it's clever, but it's not plausible given our current understanding of those types of fungi and the hosts that they parasitize.

Autoplay Next

Examples

  • Some micro-wasps that parasitize eggs are so small you may never see them.

  • The Ant then dies and the fungus parasitizes its body to build a tall, thin stalk from its neck.

  • At just about every stage in an insect's life cycle, one or more species of wasps will parasitize it.

    Academic text (1995)

  • The tiny flies, some species less than 1 mm across, attack and parasitize fire ants, eventually decapitating them.

    Academic text (2004)

  • The wasps parasitized these new hosts, killing nineteen of every twenty flies.

    Academic text (2000)

  • But both common types of algae that parasitize turtles can withstand long periods of darkness and desiccation.

    Academic text (1992)

  • Argas vespertilionis (also known as Carios vespertilionis) ticks parasitize several bat species around the world, except in the Americas (2, 3).

    Academic text (2012)

  • The world's tiniest known insect is a microscopic wasp that parasitizes bot lice eggs.

  • Parasitized bees may have deformed wings and abdomens and a shorter lifespan than their unparasitized hivemates.

    Academic text (1999)

  • The tiny flies, some species less than 1 mm across, attack and parasitize fire ants, eventually decapitating them.

Antonyms

to support
753 1.4

Give money or other help so a person can live and study

How Parasitic

to overrun
38 4.8
to parasitize
  • Specialized
1 8.1
to live on
38 3.2
to feed on
69 2.9

Surface Forms

parasitize infinitive
parasitized past
parasitized past participle
parasitizing present participle
parasitizes third person singular

Morphology

parasitize = parasite (transparent) = parasite + ize

A regular verb formed by adding the productive verb-forming suffix '-ize' to the noun 'parasite', yielding the literal biological meaning.

Etymology

Parasitize comes from Greek parts para- ('beside') and sitos ('food'), and a parasitos was 'one who eats at another's table'. So to parasitize in biology is to live on or in another organism and take its food, often hurting the host.