What does «heterometría» mean in Spanish?
- Literally means "different measures or magnitudes". It is a term that has different meanings depending on the subject in which it is applied.
- In genetics, a mechanism for generating changes in developmental outcomes that depends on the amount of expression of certain genes and, therefore, on the amount of proteins they encode. Changes in such control mechanisms can produce significant morphological changes without any mutation in the proteins themselves and have important evolutionary consequences. For example, variations in beak shape and size among different species of Galapagos finches.
- In medicine, a pathological phenomenon consisting of the quantitative alteration of the constituent parts of anatomical elements without modification of their nature. For example, heterometry of the lower limbs is a pathology that can be structural or functional. If it is structural, there is a difference in the length of one of the bony segments of the legs (femur and/or tibia); if it is functional, it is characterized by being caused by different podalic support, mainly by asymmetric pronation.
- In language, it refers to the use of various types of meter in a poem. A sonnet is said to be heterometric (or polymetric) because the lines do not all have the same measure. It is also called anisosyllabic. For example, the fable Le Corbeau et le Renard, by Jean de La Fontaine, contains alexandrines, decasyllables, octosyllables and a heptasyllable, so we can speak of a heterometric poem. The heterometry is characteristic of the Spanish cantares de gesta, in which the diffusion is oral in origin and the verses have a different number of cantares de gesta.
- In Music, presence of different metrics in a piece of music.
- In anatomy, the study of the size, weight, volume and shape of individuals.
- In geology, arrangement of a formation in which fine elements (powders, sands) and coarse elements (cobbles, pebbles) are contiguous; the opposite is homometry.