syncytial

From syncyti(um) +‎ -al.

• (UK) IPA^(key): /sɪnˈsɪtɪəl/, /sɪnˈsɪʃəl/

syncytial (comparative more syncytial, superlative most syncytial)

1. (biology) Of or pertaining to a syncytium.
   • 1906, Robert T. Frank, “Chorionepitheliomatous Proliferation in Teratomata”, in George H. Simmons, editor, Journal of the American Medical Association, Volume 46, American Medical Association, page 254:

     The epithelium, however, in many regions has a more syncytial appearance due to loss of cell boundaries.

   • 1986, Timothy H. Moss, Tumours of the Nervous System, Springer, page 85:

     In more syncytial areas, tumour cells have plump cell bodies and rounded nuclei, which may show deep invaginations.

   • 2013, Nisheet Anant Agni, Rajiv Mukund Borle, Salivary Gland Pathologies, Jaypee Brothers Medical Publishers, page 135:

     The cytoplasmic borders of intermediate cells are sometimes sharply demarcated, notably so in areas where cells are less cohesive; however, often the cells have a more syncytial arrangement in which individual borders can be appreciated only with difficulty.

2. Characterized by interdependence and a sense of mutual identity.
   • 2012, Joan Offerman-Zuckerberg, Politics and Psychology: Contemporary Psychodynamic Perspectives:

     The natural death of a single member is perceived as a collective catastrophe; a maiming would is inflected on the body of all members of the group who are not willing to be separated from him, but fear being dragged to death with him. The syncytial group both denies and works through death in their own way: it transforms death, from a natural and individual event passively endured, into a collective and cultural event controlled by ritual.

   • 2018, Domenico A. Nesci, Revisiting Jonestown‎, Rowman & Littlefield (Lexington Books), page 57:

     It was a process that had begun in ancient times, with the institution of the sacred king/double of the people in a social body which was much more syncytial (and therefore more exposed to self-destruction) than the one represented by the consciousness of the Tudor age.

   • 2018, Earl Hopper, Haim Weinberg, The Social Unconscious in Persons, Groups, and Societies:

     This corresponds to the Dionysian model, in which experience is syncretic and ambiguous, communication is immediate, relationship is fusional, sociability is syncytial and participative (see endnote 3), and mental processes are nonrepresentational, but simply experiential.

• syncytical

• respiratory syncytial virus (RSV)
• syncytiality
• syncytialization
• syncytialized
• syncytially

• multinuclear
• multinucleate
• polynuclear
• polynucleate