subitaneous

From Latin subitaneus. Doublet of sudden.

• Rhymes: -eɪniəs

subitaneous (comparative more subitaneous, superlative most subitaneous)

1. (obsolete) Sudden; suddenly done or made.
   • 1647, A Sudden Essay Or Subitaneous Conceit:
2. (of the young of a species) Immediately developing (as contrasted with e.g. diapausing).
   • 1989 October 31, Roger Neville Hughes, Functional Biology of Clonal Animals, Springer Science & Business Media, →ISBN, page 136:

     ... subitaneous (immediately developing) and diapausing (dormant) eggs, brood retention, environmental sex determination and suppression of meiosis in subitaneous eggs. The production of subitaneous and diapausing eggs is […]

   • 2019 August 2, S. J. Hawkins, A. L. Allcock, A. E. Bates, L. B. Firth, I. P. Smith, S. E. Swearer, P. A. Todd, Oceanography and Marine Biology: An annual review. Volume 57, CRC Press, →ISBN, page 17:

     ... subitaneous or resting. This is enough to make the Calanoida eggs (about 104–106 m-2 of bottom area) more abundant than those of Rotifera (about 104 m-2) and Cladocera (about 103–105 m-2) in sediment assemblages (Hairston 1996). Among […]

   • 2019 September 25, Victor R. Alekseev, Bernadette Pinel-Alloul, Dormancy in Aquatic Organisms. Theory, Human Use and Modeling, Springer Nature, →ISBN, page 167:

     ... subitaneous offspring (Arbačiauskas 1998). The larger early fecundity at high food concentrations resulted in higher fitness of post-diapause females also in D. magna; however, a trend for a higher fitness in subitaneous offspring was […]

• abrupt, precipitous, spontaneous; see also Thesaurus:sudden

• “subitaneous”, in Webster’s Revised Unabridged Dictionary, Springfield, Mass.: G. & C. Merriam, 1913, →OCLC.