Echinus

Century Dictionary and Cyclopedia

1. n. A hedgehog.
2. n. A sea-urchin.
3. n. [capitalized] [NL.] A Linnean genus (1735), formerly used with great latitude, now the typical genus of the family Echinidæ, containing such sea-urchins or sea-eggs as E. sphæra, the common British species, or the Mediterranean E. esculentus, which is extensively used for food, the ovaries being eaten. The genus may be taken to exemplify not only the family to which it pertains, but the whole order of regular sea-eggs, and the class of sea-urchins itself. The shape is depressed-globose, with centric mouth and anus; the shell or test is hard, immovable, nreridionally divided into five pairs of imperforate alternating with five pairs of perforate plates, the plates studded with tubercles, and in life bearing movable spines. The perforate plates are the ambulacra, emitting the tube-feet. The mouth has a complicated system of plates, constituting the object known, when detached, as Aristotle's lantern (which see, under lantern). A sea-urchin is comparable to a starfish with the five arms bent upward and their ends brought together in the center over the back of the animal, and then soldered together throughout, with the modification of internal structure which such an arrangement of the parts would necessarily entail.
4. n. In architecture, the convex projecting molding of eccentric curve in Greek examples, supporting the abacus of the Doric capital; hence, the corresponding feature in capitals of other orders, or any molding of similar profile to the Doric echinus. Such moldings are often sculptured or painted with the egg-and-dart ornament.
5. n. [capitalized] A genus of dicotyledonous plants belonging to the family Euphorbiaceæ. See Mallotus.

Wiktionary

1. n. A taxonomic genus within the family Echinidae — certain sea urchins.

GNU Webster's 1913

1. n. (Zoöl.) A hedgehog.
2. n. (Zoöl.) A genus of echinoderms, including the common edible sea urchin of Europe.
3. n. The rounded molding forming the bell of the capital of the Grecian Doric style, which is of a peculiar elastic curve. See Entablature.
4. n. The quarter-round molding (ovolo) of the Roman Doric style. See Illust. of Column
5. n. A name sometimes given to the egg and anchor or egg and dart molding, because that ornament is often identified with the Roman Doric capital. The name probably alludes to the shape of the shell of the sea urchin.

WordNet 3.0

1. n. ovolo molding between the shaft and the abacus of a Doric column