[f. mod.L. type fissipar-us (f. FISSI- + L. parēre to bring forth; incorrectly on analogy of vīviparus) + -OUS.] a. Of organisms: Producing new individuals by fission. b. Of or pertaining to the process of reproduction by fission. Hence Fissiparously adv.
1835–6. R. B. Todd, The Cyclopædia of Anatomy and Physiology, I. 145/2. The first of these modes of reproduction is entitled fissiparous.
1872. Nicholson, Palæont., 94. Fission in the Actinozoa differs from gemmation chiefly in the fact, that the polypes produced fissiparously resemble one another in organisation, and often in size, as soon as they become distinct.
1887. W. Hooper in Encycl. Brit. (ed. 9), XXII. 464/1. There are organisms which are fissiparous, and when cut in two form two fresh independent organisms, so diffused is the vitality of the original organism; and the same phenomenon may be observed in regard to human communities.
transf. 1874. Morley, Compromise (1886), 70. All error is what physiologists term fissiparous, and in exterminating one false opinion you may be hindering the growth of an uncounted brood of false opinions.
1890. Times, 21 Nov., 9/2. Scotch Home Rule and, perhaps, half-a-dozen other fissiparous developments of ‘national life.’
So Fissiparation, the process of fissiparous reproduction. Fissiparism = prec. Fissiparity, the attribute of being fissiparous.
1864. Athenæum, No. 1920, 13 April, 216/1. However animalcules and corals, or larval beings, may divide or bud, it is but the multiplication of the same individual, and fissiparation and gemmation have limits in the number of generations produced.
1869. trans. Figuier’s Ocean World, iv. 85. This is what naturalists term generation by division—fissiparism or fission.
1872. Dana, Corals, i. 57. This dividing one’s self in two, for the sake of an increase of population, is the process called spontaneous fission or fissiparity.
1891. Monist, I. 627. M. Delbœuf accounts for the change from fissiparity to sexuality by reference to mathematical law applicable to the transformation of species, according to which from the moment that a constant cause begins to make a type vary, in however small a degree, the variations will end by victoriously disputing the position with it.
