A single tiny animal or creature visible only under a microscope; one animalcule.
Latin singular form meaning 'small animal,' coined as scientists needed precise terminology for individual microscopic organisms observed through early microscopes.
This is the original Latin form that started the whole animalcule vocabulary—when Dutch scientist Antonie van Leeuwenhoek first described these organisms, he needed Latin words because modern science hadn't caught up with what he was seeing.
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