Scission
[SIH-zhən]
Part of speech: noun
Origin: French, 14th century
1.
(Technical) The action or state of cutting or being cut; a division or split between people or parties.
2.
(Biochemistry) Breakage of a chemical bond, especially one in a long chain molecule so that two smaller chains result.
Examples of Scission in a sentence
"There was a scission between the two versions of events."
"The geneticist wanted to create a scission in the DNA sequence."
About Scission
This word comes from Middle English by way of Old French. It stems from the late Latin “scissio(n-),” from “scindere,” meaning “cut, cleave.”
Did you Know?
It’s natural to assume that “scission” and “scissors” have the same root. They’re both related to cutting, but they have different etymological paths. “Scissors” comes from the Latin verb “caedere,” meaning “to cut.” The Middle English term for “scissors” was “sisoures” or “cisours,” which stems from the French “cisoires.” A printing mistake in the 1700s resulted in the cutting tool’s current form, and “scissors” was assumed to derive from “scindere,” like the word “scission.”
