Definitions
American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition
- n. Any of various palmlike gymnospermous cone-bearing evergreen plants of the division Cycadophyta, native to warm regions and having large pinnately compound leaves.
Century Dictionary and Cyclopedia
- n. One of the Cycadaceæ.
- n. A fossil cycadean trunk belonging to either of the genera Cycadeoidea or Bennettites.
Wiktionary
- n. botany Any plant of the division Cycadophyta, as the sago palm, etc.
GNU Webster's 1913
- n. (Bot.) Any plant of the natural order Cycadaceæ, as the sago palm, etc.
WordNet 3.0
- n. any tropical gymnosperm of the order Cycadales; having unbranched stems with a crown of fernlike leaves
Etymologies
- From New Latin Cycas ("genus of tropical trees") (Wiktionary)
- New Latin Cycas, Cycad-, genus name, from Greek kukas, erroneous reading of koïkas, accusative pl. of koïx, a kind of palm tree, perhaps of Egyptian origin. (American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition)
Examples
“Ms. Coelho, who not only can wax poetic about the female epiphytic cycad in the Botanical Garden's New World Lowland Rainforest exhibit or the incendiary Capsicum chinense peppers in the Edible Garden area but who also spars gamely with chipmunks on her own property, in Putnam Valley couldn't have been more generous with her time or patient with my level of horticultural idiocy.”
“The bird bends down to delicately lift an orangish fruit—the seed of a cycad?”
“One of the long-necked creatures neatly bit off the crown of a cycad and continued its lumbering progress with huge fronds dripping from its not too capacious mouth.”
“University of Utah scientists discovered a strange reproductive method in primitive cycad plants: The plants heat up and emit a toxic odor to drive pollen-covered insects out of male cycad cones, and then use a milder odor to draw the bugs into female cones so the plants are pollinated.”
“Patches of dry deciduous forests, especially along the Tirupathi Hill Ranges, are known for a large number of medicinal plants and various other species of botanical interest, among which are the rare endemic cycad (Cycas beddomei) and Psilotum nudum.”
“These are areas with high numbers of endemic plants and some very primitive species, such as the cycad Zamia.”
“International trade threatens a range of species, from birds such as the brownheaded parrot (Poicephalus cryptoxanthus) whose populations have been severely impacted by trapping for the cagebird trade, to plants such as the rare and localised Retief cycad (Encephalartos lebomboensis), which has been decimated by cycad collectors.”
“Other primitive plants include the cycad, Cycas rumphii, and the giant Agathis macrophylla and Dacrydium nausoriense.”
“Aleurites moluccana, Ficus theophrastoides, areas of bamboo (Bambusa spp.), and the gymnosperms Podocarpus neriifolius, a cycad (Cycas seemannii), and Gymnostoma vitiense.”
“The endemic cycad (Encephalartos turneri) is found on some of the surrounding inselbergs.”
Lists
These user-created lists contain the word ‘cycad’.
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-ad
of or relating to; used to form names
monad, Iliad, cycad, gonad, dyad, triad, tetrad, pentad, hexad, heptad, octad, ennead and 5 more...
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Favorite Five-Letter Words
Just what it sounds like. My favorites. Five letters.
ennui, barfy, samba, schwa, beefy, chunk, queef, spasm, skulk, bowel, elbow, fruit and 235 more...
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Words of Dinosaurology
This quickly got bigger and weirder than originally intended, so now it's housing terms that relate to the study of dinosaurs and other prehistoric creatures. See also Dinosaurs, Pterosaurs, Ichthy...
zygopophyses, ziphodont, plesiomorphic, cleidoic, endothermy, ectothermy, viviparous, vertebrae, cervical, dorsal, sacral, caudal and 628 more...
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elegant earth words
Because the other elements see all the beauty. Yet earth is viridian foliage and crystalline chasms, glittering seams of frozen light and vast mountainous expanses. Look these words up, and discove...
lapidescent, rupestrine, chthonian, argilliferous, crystalline, champaign, saprolite, epierogeny, archipelago, yggdrasil, geognosis, geolatry and 23 more...
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botanica
liverwort, quaking aspen, weeping willow, sequoia, mahogany, manzanita, cycad, gymnosperm, angiosperm, sporophyte, epiphyte, dicot and 75 more...
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Living Fossils
Creatures that lived in prehistoric times and still live today (which would be most of them). Loosely interpreted to include animals like the armadillo, which is a surviving genus of a larger group...
coelacanth, horseshoe crab, gingko tree, cycad, horsetail, club moss, shark, jellyfish, giant squid, dawn redwood, cedar wood wasp, glypheoid lobsters and 20 more...
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the grove
hawthorn, poplar, cedar, myrtle, rowan, oak, hornbeam, alder, yew, hazel, cypress, elder and 64 more...
Tweets
Looking for tweets for cycad.

hernesheir cf. coontie Dec 31, 2008