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osmotically

osmotically

1 9.1
In a way that water moves across a thin membrane from low to high salt or sugar
  • adverb
  • /ˌɑzˈmoʊtɪkli/
  • Specialized
: osmóticamente
  • The exoticism, timelessness, and sensuality—the blackness—associated with the colonies envelops the Creole woman and filters osmotically into her blood.
  • osmotically active

Examples

  • Aquatic animals often face osmotically stressful environments where water and salts must be balanced.

  • Even though Gay emigrated as a young child and lived in New York for the rest of her life, she had all sorts of her mother's habitual gestures of speech that I absorbed osmotically, without even knowing that certain phrases or words weren't ordinary American talk.

    Fiction book (1996)
  • Then the forward scout, skiniform, osmotically thick-puckered, ceased to warn.

    Academic text (2004)
  • They might casually consider the 747 diagram provided to them and learn osmotically how to exit in case of emergency.

    Fiction book (2001)
  • This conservation of water, accompanied by the loss of sodium and other osmotically active substances in the urine, corrects concentrated extracellular fluid.

    Academic text (1998)
  • They usually diffuse osmotically from regions of poverty or political oppression—sometimes both.

    Academic text (1993)
  • But the people thought he was divinity itself - an avatar come down to Earth - and there's an ancient belief in India that if you are in the presence of a great person or of a divinity, you acquire merit simply by, almost osmotically, by being in their presence.

  • Specifically, it must be determined whether such beliefs and practices have been adopted as a consequence of inductively derived conclusions based upon observations, or whether such beliefs have been osmotically implanted and not subjected to any degree of critical thought.

    Academic text (1990)
  • Many organisms that live in osmotically challenging environments such as seawater accumulate low-molecular weight substances within their body fluids to maintain osmotic equilibrium.

    Academic text (1991)
  • Plants can absorb water osmotically through their roots from the soil.

Surface Forms

osmotically positive

Morphology

osmotically = osmotic (transparent) = osmosis + tic + ally

Formed by standard adjective-to-adverb derivation (osmotic + -ally) where the meaning 'in a manner relating to osmosis' is directly predictable.

Etymology

The word osmotically comes from the Greek root osmos, which means 'push' or 'thrust'. So if water or a drug moves osmotically, it moves because of that 'push' through a thin cell wall or membrane, which is why the word describes movement by osmosis.