armature

American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition

1. n. Electricity The rotating part of a dynamo, consisting essentially of copper wire wound around an iron core.
2. n. Electricity The moving part of an electromagnetic device such as a relay, buzzer, or loudspeaker.
3. n. Electricity A piece of soft iron connecting the poles of a magnet.
4. n. Biology A protective covering, structure, or organ of an animal or a plant, such as teeth, claws, thorns, or the shell of a turtle.
5. n. A framework serving as a supporting core for the material that is used to make a sculpture.

Century Dictionary and Cyclopedia

1. n. Military equipment; especially, defensive armor.
2. n. In zoology and anatomy: Any part or organ of an animal serving as a means of defense or offense.
3. n. Any apparatus or set of organs without reference to defense; an equipment; an appanage: as, the genital or the anal armature.
4. n. In botany, the hairs, prickles, etc., covering an organ.
5. n. A body of armed troops.
6. n. In architecture, any system of bracing in timber or metal, as the iron rods used to sustain slender columns, to hold up canopies, etc. The term is applied especially to the iron framework by which leadlights are secured in medieval windows.
7. n. A piece of soft iron applied simply by contact to the two poles of a magnet or electromagnet as a means of maintaining the magnetic power undiminished. In dynamo-electric machines (which see, under electric) the armature is a bar or ring of soft iron, around which coils of insulated copper wire have been wound. This armature is rotated rapidly in the field of the adjacent electromagnets. In the Holtz electric machine the armature is a strip of varnished paper attached to the edge of the openings or windows of the fixed plate. Also called armor.
8. n. That part of an electric machine in which electric power is generated (generator) or consumed (motor). Sometimes the rotating element is called armature, irrespective of its function. See field, 13.

Wiktionary

1. n. The rotating part of an electric motor or dynamo, which mostly consists of coils of wire around a metal core.
2. n. The moving part in an electromechanical device like a loudspeaker or a buzzer.
3. n. A piece of soft steel or iron that connects the poles of a magnet
4. n. A supporting framework in a sculpture.
5. n. A protective organ, structure, or covering of an animal or plant, for defense or offense, like claws, teeth, thorns, or the shell of a turtle.
6. n. Armor or a suit of armor.

GNU Webster's 1913

1. n. Armor; whatever is worn or used for the protection and defense of the body, esp. the protective outfit of some animals and plants.
2. n. (Magnetism) A piece of soft iron used to connect the two poles of a magnet, or electro-magnet, in order to complete the circuit, or to receive and apply the magnetic force. In the ordinary horseshoe magnet, it serves to prevent the dissipation of the magnetic force.
3. n. (Arch.) Iron bars or framing employed for the consolidation of a building, as in sustaining slender columns, holding up canopies, etc.
4. n. (Elec.) That moving part of a dynamo or electric generator in which a current is induced by a moving through a magnetic field, or, in an electric motor, the part through which the applied current moves, thereby generating torque. The armature usually consists of a series of coils or groups of insulated conductors surrounding a core of iron.

WordNet 3.0

1. n. coil in which voltage is induced by motion through a magnetic field