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solu

Pronunciation: /ˈsolu/

“solu” is a Finnish word. Its 7 meanings in English:

noun

  1. cell (basic unit of a living organism)
  2. cell (small group of people forming part of a larger organization, e.g. in a production facility or of a criminal organization)
  3. cell (small thunderstorm that forms ahead of a storm front)
  4. cell (minimal unit of a cellular automaton)
  5. cell (unit in a statistical array, e.g. in a spreadsheet)
  6. cell (three-dimensional facet of a polytope)
  7. cell (short, fixed-length packet as in asynchronous transfer mode)

Etymology

Back-formation from solukka (“gap (between buildings); nook”) (dialectal), itself from sola (“narrow gap between buildings”). Coined by Finnish physician and philologist Elias Lönnrot in 1858. Perhaps the sense “gap” was used as the basis of the analogy in which cells were seen as small rooms (compare cell < Latin cella (“small room, compartment”)) akin to cramped 'nooks' and/or separated by gaps…

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Definitions are from Wiktionary, extracted by Kaikki.org, and are available under the CC BY-SA 4.0 licence.