pedicle
English
Etymology
From Latin pedīculus (“little foot”), diminutive of pēs.
Pronunciation
- IPA(key): /ˈpɛdɪkəl/
Noun
pedicle (plural pedicles)
- (zoology) A fleshy line used to attach and anchor brachiopods and some bivalve molluscs to a substrate.
- 1867, William Henry Smyth, The Sailor's Word-Book:
- A species of shell-fish, often found sticking by its pedicle to the bottom of ships, doing no other injury than deadening the way a little: "Barnacles, termed soland geese In th' islands of the Orcades."
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- (zoology) The attachment point for antlers in cervids.
- 1910, John T. McCutcheon, In Africa:
- His long, rakish horns are mounted on a pedicle that extends above his head, thus accentuating the droll length of his features.
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- A stalk that attaches a tumour to normal tissue
- 1859, Joseph Maclise, Surgical Anatomy:
- --Figure 3. Fig. 4, Plate 58, represents the neck of the bladder and neighbouring part of the urethra of an ox, in which a polypous growth is seen attached by a long pedicle to the veru montanum and blocking up the neck of the bladder.
- 1896, George M. Gould, Anomalies and Curiosities of Medicine:
- One of these women, a secundipara, had gone two weeks over time, and had a large ovarian cyst, the pedicle of which had become twisted, the fluid in the cyst being sanguineous.
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- pedicel (any sense)
- 1914, Alexander Teixeira De Mattos, The Mason-bees:
- One of the ends is lengthened out into a neck or pedicle, which is as long as the egg proper.
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- peduncle (any sense)
- 1998 January 9, Patrick J. Gannon et al., “Asymmetry of Chimpanzee Planum Temporale: Humanlike Pattern of Wernicke's Brain Language Area Homolog”, in Science, volume 279, number 5348, DOI: , pages 220-222:
- The chimpanzee Heschl's gyrus homolog also showed evidence of a strongly excavated middle Heschl's sulcus, within the confines of a single gyral pedicle, predominantly in the right hemisphere.
- 2001 May 11, Maarten Kamermans et al., “Hemichannel-Mediated Inhibition in the Outer Retina”, in Science, volume 292, number 5519, DOI: , pages 1178-1180:
- The surface of the extracellular space at the base of the cone pedicle in goldfish has been estimated to be between 0.01 to 0.1 µm 2 depending on the fixation procedure used [ C. A. V. Vandenbranden, et al., Vision Res.
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- (surgery) Part of a skin or tissue graft temporarily left attached to its original site.
- A fetter for the foot.
See also
- pedicel
Further reading
- “pedicle” in Douglas Harper, Online Etymology Dictionary, 2001–2019.
Anagrams
- pedicel