Popularized in 16th-century alchemy and 19th-century fiction, it has historically referred to the creation of a miniature, fully formed human. The concept has roots in preformationism as well as earlier folklore and alchemic traditions.

Mar 7, 2025 · Homunculus, diminutive fully formed human body, historically believed to inhabit a germ cell (an egg or a sperm) and to have the capacity to increase in size, giving rise to an adult human.

: a miniature adult that in the theory of preformation is held to inhabit the germ cell and to produce a mature individual merely by an increase in size. Latin, diminutive of homin-, homo human …

A homunculus is a "little man." In the 17th century, theorists called preformationists argued that a human being begins life as a tiny, preformed person — a homunculus — encapsulated in the sperm or, as some thought, in the egg.

Jun 2, 2024 · Obsolete form of homunculus. Learned borrowing from Latin homunculus. “ homuncule ”, in Trésor de la langue française informatisé [Digitized Treasury of the French Language], 2012.

Jul 24, 2023 · But in neuroanatomy, the cortical homunculus represents either the motor or the sensory distribution along the cerebral cortex of the brain. The motor homunculus is a topographic representation of the body parts and its correspondents along the precentral gyrus of …

An exceedingly minute body that, according to the views of development held by some medical scientists of the 16th and 17th centuries, was contained in a sperm or an oocyte. From this preformed but infinitely small structure, the human body was thought to be developed. See also: preformation theory, animalcule. 2.

Aug 13, 2008 · The term homunculus is Latin for “little man.” It is used in neurology today to describe the map in the brain of sensory neurons in each part of the body (the somatosensory homunculus).

Jan 1, 2022 · In Latin, “homunculus” means the “little man” (Bear et al. 2007; Purves et al. 2014). It is the disfigured neural representation of the body in the primary somatosensory (post-central gyrus) and primary motor cerebral cortex (pre-central gyrus) (Barker et al. 2017; Snell 2010).

3 meanings: → a former name for homunculus 1. a miniature person; midget 2. (in early biological theory) a fully-formed.... Click for more definitions.