[pol-ee-mawrf] 
| 1. | Biology. an organism having more than one adult form, as the different castes in social ants. |
| 2. | Crystallography. any of the crystal forms assumed by a substance that exhibits polymorphism. |
| 3. | Anatomy. granulocyte. |
[gran-yuh-loh-sahyt] | a circulating white blood cell having prominent granules in the cytoplasm and a nucleus of two or more lobes. |
| pol·y·morph (pŏl'ē-môrf') n.
|
granulocyte gran·u·lo·cyte (grān'yə-lō-sīt')
n.
Any of a group of white blood cells having granules in the cytoplasm.
| granulocyte (grān'yə-lō-sīt') Pronunciation Key
Any of various white blood cells that contain granular material in the cytoplasm and are immunologically active, especially in phagocytosis. Granulocytes are the most numerous of the white blood cells in humans. |
polymorph
in crystallography, the condition in which a solid chemical compound exists in more than one crystalline form; the forms differ somewhat in physical and, sometimes, chemical properties, although their solutions and vapours are identical. The existence of different crystalline or molecular forms of elements is called allotropy, although it has been suggested that the meaning of allotropy should be restricted to different molecular forms of an element, such as oxygen (O2) and ozone (O3), and that polymorphism be applied to different crystalline forms of the same species, whether a compound or an element. Differences in the crystalline forms of many elements and compounds were discovered during the 1820s by Eilhardt Mitscherlich, a German chemist.
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iˌmɔrf