syncytial

adj

1. Of or pertaining to a syncytium.

   “The epithelium, however, in many regions has a more syncytial appearance due to loss of cell boundaries.”

   “In more syncytial areas, tumour cells have plump cell bodies and rounded nuclei, which may show deep invaginations.”

   “The cytoplasmic borders of intermediate cells are sometimes sharply demarcated, notably so in areas where cells are less cohesive; however, often the cells have a more syncytial arrangement in which individual borders can be appreciated only with difficulty.”

   “The vaccine would be the first to protect babies from respiratory syncytial virus, or R.S.V., which is the reason many infants are admitted to children’s hospitals each year and kills several hundred under 5 each year.”

2. Characterized by interdependence and a sense of mutual identity.

   “The natural death of a single member is perceived as a collective catastrophe; a maiming would is inflected on the body of all members of the group who are not willing to be separated from him, but fear being dragged to death with him. The syncytial group both denies and works through death in their own way: it transforms death, from a natural and individual event passively endured, into a collective and cultural event controlled by ritual.”

   “It was a process that had begun in ancient times, with the institution of the sacred king/double of the people in a social body which was much more syncytial (and therefore more exposed to self-destruction) than the one represented by the consciousness of the Tudor age.”

   “This corresponds to the Dionysian model, in which experience is syncretic and ambiguous, communication is immediate, relationship is fusional, sociability is syncytial and participative (see endnote 3), and mental processes are nonrepresentational, but simply experiential.”