Definitions
American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition
- n. Botany See flower head.
- n. Biology A small knob or head-shaped part, such as a protuberance of a bone or the tip of an insect's antenna.
Century Dictionary and Cyclopedia
- n. In anatomy, the head of a bone; especially, the head of a rib, as distinguished from its shoulder or tuberculum. Also called capitellum. See cut under endoskeleton.
- n. In Cirripedia, specifically, the valves of the shell collectively, inclosing more or less of the body of the animal, as distinguished from the peduncular part of the creature. When a peduncle exists, as in
Lepas , it is the hinder part of the body which is inclosed in the capitulum. - n. In botany, a close head of sessile flowers, as in the Compositæ; also, as used by some early botanists, the receptacle of various fungi; in mosses, a close, dense cluster of leaves. Also called capitule.
- n. In entomology: The enlarged terminal portion of the halter or poiser of a dipterous insect
- n. The enlarged terminal portion of the sucking mouth of a fly, formed by two suctorial flaps called labella.
- n. The knob at the end of a capitate antenna.
- n. One of the stalked spheroidal sporangia of certain mycetozoans.
- n. In actinians, the upper part of the column as distinguished from the scapus.
Wiktionary
- n. botany A densely clustered inflorescence composed of a large number of individual florets arising from a platform-like base.
- n. arachnology The head-like mouthpart apparatus of a tick, including the palpi, mandibles, and hypostome.
- n. anatomy A small protuberance on a bone which articulates into another bone to form a ball-and-socket joint.
- n. entomology, obsolete The enlarged end of a proboscis.
GNU Webster's 1913
- n. A thick head of flowers on a very short axis, as a clover top, or a dandelion; a composite flower. A capitulum may be either globular or flat.
- n. (Anat.) A knoblike protuberance of any part, esp. at the end of a bone or cartilage. [See
Illust. of Artiodactyla.]
WordNet 3.0
- n. fruiting spike of a cereal plant especially corn
- n. a dense cluster of flowers or foliage
- n. an arrangement of leafy branches forming the top or head of a tree
Etymologies
- From Latin capitulum (Wiktionary)
- Latin, diminutive of caput, capit-, head; see kaput- in Indo-European roots. (American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition)
Examples
“Above the front part of the capitulum is a slight depression, the radial fossa, which receives the anterior border of the head of the radius, when the forearm is flexed.”
“Vespers, that is, the capitulum, hymn, antiphon of the "Magnificat", is taken from the Sanctorale.”
“Greek Fathers, (as "capitulum" by the Latins,) to denote a passage of”
“I could with but slight difficulty find my way back to Jon IV, or Jon X, or Jon CLXXVI, Dei gratia capitulum, but Messrs. D & M do not even accord me that exiguous courtesy.”
“Nevertheless, at all adventures they rang the bells ad capitulum capitulantes.”
Five books of the lives, heroic deeds and sayings of Gargantua and his son Pantagruel
“[46] Cramer, 'Bildungsabweichungen,' p. 56, tab. vii, fig. 10, figures a case wherein the two central flowers of the capitulum of _Centaurea”
Vegetable Teratology An Account of the Principal Deviations from the Usual Construction of Plants
“I owe to Mr. Berkeley the communication of a capitulum of a species of _Bidens_, in which there was a transition from the form of ligulate corollas to those that were deeply divided into three, four, or five oblong lobes.”
Vegetable Teratology An Account of the Principal Deviations from the Usual Construction of Plants
“A less degree of this change wherein a few flowers may be found, as it were, detached from the ordinary capitulum may often be observed in”
Vegetable Teratology An Account of the Principal Deviations from the Usual Construction of Plants
“Item sunt alie expense facte in Curiis Regis annuatim pro officio generalis procuratoris in diversis Curiis Regis, que de necessitate fieri oportet, pro brevibus Regis, et Cartis impetendis, et aliis, negociis in eisdem Curiis expediendis, que ad minus ascendunt per annum, prout evidencius apparet, per compotum et memoranda dicti fratris de Scaccario qui per capitulum ad illud officium oneratur ... lx m.”
“The joint between the head of the radius and the capitulum of the humerus is an arthrodial joint.”
Lists
These user-created lists contain the word ‘capitulum’.
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Interesting words
A list of words that are odd or words that I have looked up.
concupiscence, brize, scree, scoria, forestaff, spanaemia, valetudinarianism, distasture, pyrethrum, laudanum, gentian, bicameral and 11184 more...
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misc. plant morphology
the concise british flora in colour (w. keble martin) - glossary - edited, and to be added to
whorled, viviparous, vittae, viscid, villous, valvate, unarmed, umbellate, umbel, tubercle, triquetrous, trigonous and 135 more...
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Random
These are just some random words that I might find a list for someday.
troglodytism, chinkle, vasculum, sabz, cucullus, tricornigerous, cuboctahedron, eruca, gamp, pilum, taha, angelhood and 244 more...
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looked up
Words I've come across while reading and looked up in the dictionary.
deesis, pendentive, revetment, aedicule, stemma, patera, ephod, entrepot, corbel, exedra, volute, archivolt and 1408 more...
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Rocketeer's Words
defenestrate, shutterbug, antique, periscope, dogma, peculiar, eccentric, banana, apple, pear, cherry, photograph and 189 more...
Tweets
Looking for tweets for capitulum.
IndiaAmos In typography, a glyph that resembles a capital C crossed by one or two vertical lines.
"Like most punctuation, the paragraph mark (or pilcrow) has an exotic history. It's tempting to recognize the symbol as a 'P for paragraph,' though the resemblance is incidental: in its original form, the mark was an open C crossed by a vertical line or two, a scribal abbreviation for capitulum, the Latin word for 'chapter.' Because written forms evolve through haste, the strokes through the C gradually came to descend further and further, its overall shape ultimately coming to resemble the modern "reverse P" by the beginning of the Renaissance. Early liturgical works, in imitation of written manuscripts, favored the traditional C-shaped capitulum; many modern bibles still do." —Jonathan Hoefler, Feb 25, 2009