coxa

American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition

1. n. Anatomy The hip or hip joint.
2. n. Zoology The first segment of the leg of an insect or other arthropod, joining the leg to the body.

Century Dictionary and Cyclopedia

1. n. The femur or thigh-bone.
2. n. In anatomy: The hipbone, os coxæ or os innominatum.
3. n. The hip-joint.
4. n. In entomology, the first or basal joint (sometimes called the hip) of an insect's leg, by which it is articulated to the body. It may be entirely uncovered, as in many flies, or received into a coxal cavity or deep hollow in the lower surface of the thorax, as in most beetles. Coxæ are said to be contiguous when those of a pair are close together, separate when there is a space between them, distant when they are widely separate, prominent when they protrude from the coxal cavities, globose when they are shaped like a ball, transverse when they lie across the body with the succeeding joint of the leg attached to the inner end, etc. These distinctions are of great value in classification. Sometimes the coxa has a small accessory piece called the trochanter, which, however, is not a true joint. Some of the older entomologists included the first two joints of the leg in the term coxa, the first being distinguished as the patella and the second as the trochanter.
5. n. The basal joint of the leg of a spider or a crustacean; a coxopodite (which see).

Wiktionary

1. n. anatomy The basal segment of a limb of various arthropods (insects and spiders, for example).

GNU Webster's 1913

1. n. (Zoöl.) The first joint of the leg of an insect or crustacean.

WordNet 3.0

1. n. the ball-and-socket joint between the head of the femur and the acetabulum