Definitions
from The Century Dictionary.
- noun A mussel-shell of the stone-boring genus Lithodomus (or Lithophagus), of the family Mytilidæ, as the Mediterranean L. dactylus, abounding in the subaqueous columns of the temple of Serapis at Pozzuoli, near Naples: so called from its shape or appearance. See
Lithodomus .
Etymologies
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Examples
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The one called the date-shell can, assisted by its liquid acid, pierce the hardest stone with its cylindrical gimlet.
Mare Nostrum (Our Sea) A Novel Vicente Blasco Ib����ez 1897
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