Meanings
sorosis1
plural soroses
- biologyAny 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.
The fruit of pineapple is a sorosis developing from numerous sessile flowers that are connote with their subtending bracts and with one another.
2017, Maria Gloria Lobo, Robert E. Paull, Handbook of Pineapple Technology
sorosis2
plural soroses
- UShistoricalA women's club; a society to further the educational and social activities of women.
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 […]
1869, Putnam's Magazine, volume 3, page 6401 more example
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[…]
1890, John Van Valkenburg, Jewels of Pythian Knighthood
Origin
sorosis · noun
- Ancient Greekσωρός“heap”
- Englishsorosis
From Ancient Greek σωρός (sōrós, “heap”).
More words from Ancient Greek
Full word history & related roots →sorosis · noun
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. It follows that it shares the same etymology, referring to aggregation, rather than the etymology of sorority, which referred to sisterhood.
Full word history & related roots →Cite this entry
sorosis. (n.d.). In WatkinsX Dictionary. Retrieved November 4, 2026, from https://dictionary.watkinsx.com/word/sorosis
“sorosis.” WatkinsX Dictionary, https://dictionary.watkinsx.com/word/sorosis. Accessed November 4, 2026.
WatkinsX Dictionary, s.v. “sorosis,” accessed November 4, 2026, https://dictionary.watkinsx.com/word/sorosis.
Source: sorosis on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.