sorosis

English

Etymology 1

From Ancient Greek σωρός (sōrós, “heap”).

Noun

sorosis (plural soroses)

1. (botany) Any multiple fruit, usually fleshy, that is derived from the multiple ovaries in an infructescence. Such a structure typically includes remnants of floral tissues such as the perianth. Examples include the mulberry and pineapple.
   • 2017, Maria Gloria Lobo, Robert E. Paull, Handbook of Pineapple Technology:

     The fruit of pineapple is a sorosis developing from numerous sessile flowers that are connote with their subtending bracts and with one another.

Etymology 2

According to Webster Suppl. 1879, an arbitrary use of the botanical term, adopted as the name of the first club of the kind, founded in 1868. It follows that it shares the same etymology, referring to aggregation, rather than the etymology of sorority, which referred to sisterhood.

Noun

sorosis (plural soroses)

1. (US historical) A women's club; a society to further the educational and social activities of women.
   • 1869, Putnam's Magazine, volume 3, page 640:

     Yet these women were not a clique, nor a sect, nor a Sorosis, but all our wives, and sisters, and daughters, and lovers. They were just the common lot […]

   • 1890, John Van Valkenburg, Jewels of Pythian Knighthood:

     They gathered up all the privacies of the city and poured them into his ear, and his family became a sorosis, or female debating society of seven hundred, discussing, day after day, all the difficulties between husbands and wives […]