holoprosencephaly

Meaning

Noun

• A congenital disorder involving insufficient division of the lobes of the brain during fetal development, resulting in skull and facial deformities ranging from minor cleft lip problems to cyclopia, in which a single eye develops where the nose would normally be.

Related

Similar words

• HPE

Narrower meaning words

• cyclopia

Origin

• From Ancient Greek ὅλος ("whole") + πρόσω (referring to the prosencephalon) + ἐγκέφαλος + English -y, i.e. “condition of a whole (inappropriately divided) forebrain”. May be decomposed as holo- + pro-