Acritan.
/ˈakrɪtə/, U.S. /ˈækrədə/ Zoology. Now historical.
With plural agreement. A former major grouping of the animal kingdom including invertebrates with no distinct nervous system.In the terminology of W. W. Macleay, Acrita was established as a fifth subkingdom alongside the four of Cuvier (see note at Radiata n.1). In the terminology of R. Owen, Acrita was conceived as a loose group or series of the Radiata and later considered equivalent to the Protozoa.
ΘΚΠ
the world > animals > invertebrates > [noun] > specific groups of
Mollusca1661
Acrita1823
microzoon1859
microzoary1863
malacozoic series1877
protostome1958
acoelomate1964
protostomian1968
1823 Ann. Philos. 6 335 Each of the Acrita, for example, imbibing nourishment at every pore of their surface internal or external, is essentially a stomach.
1835 R. Owen in Todd's Cycl. Anat. & Physiol. I. 48/1 The Acrita have been termed Protozoa, as being on the first step of animal organization.
1837 W. Whewell Hist. Inductive Sci. III. xvii. vii. §2. 450 Some naturalists have doubted whether these zoophytes are not referrible to two types (acrita or polypes, and the true radiata), rather than to one.
1879 Chambers's Encycl. at Zoology The lowest animals, in which no trace of a nervous system has been discovered, have been formed into a separate division of the animal kingdom, under the names Acrita and Protozoa.
1989 Jrnl. Hist. Biol. 22 283 Owen's addition of the term ‘Acrita’ arose in this work without warning, and seems to have vanished from the literature without serious discussion.
This entry has been updated (OED Third Edition, December 2011; most recently modified version published online June 2022).
<
n.1823