Definitions

from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 5th Edition.

  • noun A small tooth or toothlike projection.

from The Century Dictionary.

  • noun A small tooth or projecting point; a denticulation; specifically, one of the long slender elements of the morphologically compound teeth of the Cape ant-eater, Orycteropus capensis, the only example of such structure among mammals.
  • noun Any small toothed or tooth-like part: as, the shagreen denticles of the shark.
  • noun In the graptolites (Hydrozoa), one of the thecæ. See theca, 1 .

from the GNU version of the Collaborative International Dictionary of English.

  • noun A small tooth or projecting point.

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License.

  • noun A small tooth
  • noun medicine A pulp stone

from WordNet 3.0 Copyright 2006 by Princeton University. All rights reserved.

  • noun small pointed ridge on the exoskeleton of an arthropod

Etymologies

from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 4th Edition

[Middle English, from Latin denticulus, diminutive of dēns, dent-, tooth; see dent- in Indo-European roots.]

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Examples

  • The transitory and singularly small and simple denticle in the horse exemplifies the rudiment of an ancestral structure in the same degree as do the hoofless splint-bones; just as the spurious hoofs dangling therefrom in hipparion are retained rudiments of the functionally developed lateral hoofs in the broader foot of palæotherium.

    The World's Greatest Books — Volume 15 — Science Various 1909

  • Claus, that the "green gland" really opens at the end of the process described by Milne-Edwards as a "tubercule auditif" and by Spence Bate as an "olfactory denticle."

    Facts and Arguments for Darwin Fritz Muller 1859

  • Well, I seed little chance of ever seeing them again, or of my seeing five shillings, but as it so happened next tide, the very 'denticle pair of trowsers comes up staring me in the face.

    Jacob Faithful Frederick Marryat 1820

  • Wild type has alternating denticle bands (arrow) and naked cuticle (arrowhead), with each mutant lacking denticle bands.

    PLoS ONE Alerts: New Articles Jianhui Guo et al. 2009

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