What's the difference between epicene and epigene?

Epicene


Definition:

  • (a. & n.) Common to both sexes; -- a term applied, in grammar, to such nouns as have but one form of gender, either the masculine or feminine, to indicate animals of both sexes; as boy^s, bos, for the ox and cow; sometimes applied to eunuchs and hermaphrodites.
  • (a. & n.) Fig.: Sexless; neither one thing nor the other.

Example Sentences:

  • (1) He arrived in Rome from Milan in 1592 and, having trained under a succession of minor masters, painted a series of strange and erotic genre pieces featuring epicene boys and still-lifes – pictures such as Boy With a Basket of Fruit and Boy Bitten by a Lizard , both from 1593-94.
  • (2) The most ambiguous of his re-creations, epicene black singer, Grace Jones , has just launched the video of her stage act.

Epigene


Definition:

  • (a.) Foreign; unnatural; unusual; -- said of forms of crystals not natural to the substances in which they are found.
  • (a.) Formed originating on the surface of the earth; -- opposed to hypogene; as, epigene rocks.

Example Sentences:

  • (1) These phenotypes were stably inherited in over 140 generations, expressing the "epigenic" properties.
  • (2) Thyroid hormone appears therefore as an epigenic signal that synchronizes axonal and dendritic outgrowth, two major parameters of the construction of the neuronal network.
  • (3) Such "epigene conversion" occurring at the Huntington disease locus in a few percent of meioses would largely account for the published anomalies in that region's genetic map.

Words possibly related to "epigene"