Definitions
American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition
- n. The cast-off skins or coverings of various organisms, such as the shells of crabs or the external coverings of the larvae and nymphs of insects.
Century Dictionary and Cyclopedia
- Cast-off skins, shells, or other coverings of animals; any parts of animals which are shed or sloughed off, as the skins of caterpillars, the shells of lobsters, the cuticle of snakes, the feathers of birds.
- Skins of animals artificially removed and prepared for preservation.
Wiktionary
- n. Plural form of exuvia.
- n. The coverings of an animal that have been shed or cast off, particularly the molted exoskeletons of arthropods.
- n. history Roman military term for weaponry and equipment stripped from the person of a foe; booty.
GNU Webster's 1913
- n. (Zoöl) Cast skins, shells, or coverings of animals; any parts of animals which are shed or cast off, as the skins of snakes, the shells of lobsters, etc.
- n. (Geol.) The fossil shells and other remains which animals have left in the strata of the earth.
WordNet 3.0
- n. cast-off skins or coverings of various organisms during ecdysis
Etymologies
- From Latin exuō ("cast off, undress"). (Wiktionary)
- Latin, from exuere, to take off. (American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition)
Examples
“If I understand what was being said correctly, then "exuviae" classical meaning - armour stripped from a dead enemy, or skin taken from or shed by an animal is correctly a plural term that is used as a singular, in the same way that English speakers say "I take off my clothes" and never "I take off my cloth".”
“Just out of exuviae, wings still folded, photo OK but not great.”
“While the body of the poem often stands in for the body of the poet, acting as a surrogate for the experience of such a biography, the body of the text in this case has gone missing, leaving behind only the exuviae of the work itself — the set of afterthoughts found in annotations and digressions, allegedly presented after the fact by experts, who have prepared this text for scholastic discussion.”
Quick Review 05 : Christian Bök : Harriet the Blog : The Poetry Foundation
“I saw these exuviae* of cicadas last nite underneath one of the branches of a large pine tree I have in my backyard.”
“SNAIL'S TALES: Parade of cicada exuviae skip to main”
“Now, throughout the greater part of this long series of stratified rocks are scattered, sometimes very abundantly, multitudes of organic remains, the fossilized exuviae of animals and plants which lived and died while the mud of which the rocks are formed was yet soft ooze, and could receive and bury them.”
“The rarity of human intrusion was evidenced by the mazes of rabbit-runs, the feathers of shy birds, the exuviae of reptiles; as also by the well-worn paths of squirrels down the sides of trunks, and thence horizontally away.”
“Its throes will heave our exuviae from their graves.”
“Again, at each epoch, the whole earth was no doubt, as now, more or less the theatre of life, and as the successive generations of each species died, their exuviae and preservable parts would be deposited over every portion of the then existing seas and oceans, which we have reason for supposing to have been more, rather than less, extensive than at present.”
On the law which has regulated the introduction of new species
“In short, he imitated the serpents, who cast off their exuviae, that, being stripped of their old age, they may gather new strength.”
Lists
These user-created lists contain the word ‘exuviae’.
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The Latin Doctor is Greek to me
Biology Students, Gladiators, Devil Dogs & Harry Potter
et tu, semper fidelis, carpe diem, cui bono, pons asinorum, limbus, e pluribus unum, sine qua non, quidnunc, lacus oblivionis, quincunx, experimentum crucis and 128 more...
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casts
broadcast, outcast, narrowcast, castaways, Jocasta, castellation, castling, conacaste, forecasts, downcast, dodecastyle, dicast and 99 more...
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250 More Spelling Words
More words for intermediate and advanced spellers.
erethism, risus, zendik, agiotage, sciolism, fusain, mbaqanga, empyrean, chary, sialogogue, zingiber, kachina and 238 more...
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Logolepsy
"Luciferous Logolepsy is a collection of over 9,000 obscure English words. Though the definition of an 'English' word might seem to be straightforward, it is not. There exist so many adopted, deriv...
Anschauung, Areopagus, Argus, Briarean, Dei gratia, Dei judicium, Deo volente, Duecento, Foehn, Geflugelte Worte, Gegenschein, Hakenkreuz and 9230 more...
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It Gives
What follows is an exercise in ordinary eternal hyperlexity, prepared in the fashion of paper matches.
fixity, commonalia, fourchette, acroamatic, etiolate, exuviae, roguery, frustrum, plenum, lowlihood, knack, surd and 2 more...
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Field Mass
for the same
fanon, armet, wether, filibuster, shadoof, shabrack, mai, sainfoin, sand-crack, panoply, guerdon, flunky and 233 more...
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Greg's Words
frippet, furtive, gimcrack, indefatigable, vicissitudes, pedant, ziggurat, susurrus, sub rosa, rodomontade, interregnum, abscise and 168 more...
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Words kirby1024 has recorded pronounc...
The list of words that kirby1024 has gotten around to recording pronounciations for.
the, testosterone, estrogen, antimnemonic, politics, memory, cache, prophylactic, gynophagia, proletariat, beguile, Vegemite and 36 more...
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Botany & Other Sciences
Weird/funny/unknown to me plant names, botany terms, & other science vocabulary.
cicely, thrave, osmunda, turnsole, bosky, auxin, xerarch, lycophyte, anthophilous, ramose, scalpellum, scape and 27 more...
Tweets
Looking for tweets for exuviae.
gregmiller The cast-off skins, shells, or other coverings (like insect coverings) of animals Dec 23, 2008