sorosis

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English

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Etymology 1

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From Ancient Greek σωρός (sōrós, heap).

Noun

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sorosis (plural soroses)

  1. (botany) Any multiple fruit, usually fleshy, that is derived from the multiple ovaries in an infructescence. Such a structure typically includes remnants of floral tissues such as the perianth. Examples include the mulberry and pineapple.
    • 2017, Maria Gloria Lobo, Robert E. Paull, Handbook of Pineapple Technology:
      The fruit of pineapple is a sorosis developing from numerous sessile flowers that are connote with their subtending bracts and with one another.

Etymology 2

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According to Webster Suppl. 1879, an arbitrary use of the botanical term, adopted as the name of the first club of the kind, founded in 1868.[1] It follows that it shares the same etymology, referring to aggregation, rather than the etymology of sorority, which referred to sisterhood.

Noun

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sorosis (plural soroses)

  1. (US historical) A women's club; a society to further the educational and social activities of women.
    • 1869, Putnam's Magazine, volume 3, page 640:
      Yet these women were not a clique, nor a sect, nor a Sorosis, but all our wives, and sisters, and daughters, and lovers. They were just the common lot []
    • 1890, John Van Valkenburg, Jewels of Pythian Knighthood:
      They gathered up all the privacies of the city and poured them into his ear, and his family became a sorosis, or female debating society of seven hundred, discussing, day after day, all the difficulties between husbands and wives []

References

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  1. ^ Murray, J.A.H. The Compact Edition of the Oxford English Dictionary (2 vols). Publisher: Oxford University Press. 1971. ISBN: 978-0198611172