clone

noun

1. 1

   A living organism (originally a plant) produced asexually from a single ancestor, to which it is genetically identical.

   This new species is a clone of the mimosa plant.

2. 2

   A group of identical cells derived from a single cell.

   […] each identified blastomere, and the clone of its descendant cells, plays a specific role in later development

3. 3

   A copy or imitation of something already existing, especially when designed to simulate it.

   The computer manufacturer produced IBM PC clones in the 1990s.

4. 4

   informalA person who is exactly like or very similar to another person, in terms of looks or behavior.

   Once, on a confident whim, I approached the group of popular girls in an attempt to broaden my circle. Their ringleader took one glance at my new Aeropostale T-shirt and whispered to her clones, “Yeah, Aero's definitely out now.”

5. 5

   slangA Castro clone.

   Some of me is clone, but a good part of me is still disco.

   By mid-1983, I had grown weary of reading literature by white gay men who fell, quite easily, into three camps: the incestuous literati of Manhattan and Fire Island, the San Francisco cropped-mustache-clones, and the Boston-to-Cambridge politically correct radical faggots.

   these are cultural categories. they change over time. new ones appear (the Leatherman is recent, the Bear very recent), old ones vanish (though individual aunties and clones are still to be found - arch-clone jimmy pike is still making videos and keeping his stomach muscles in great shape - the Auntie and the Clone as generally recognized categories are no longer with us).

   Since the Second World War and the rise of the middle-class “clone gay” in the US and a similar move away from homosexual effeminacy in Britain—often rooted in working class culture—gender nonconforming or effeminate gay males have been edged out of mainstream understandings of what it means to be gay.

verb

1. 1

   To create a clone of.

   The scientists were able to clone a sheep.

   We cloned the database to perform some testing.

Forms

plural

clones

past tense

cloned

past participle

cloned

present participle

cloning

third person singular

clones