fossil

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Definitions (26)

Toggle American Heritage definitions American Heritage Dictionary (7)

  1. noun A remnant or trace of an organism of a past geologic age, such as a skeleton or leaf imprint, embedded and preserved in the earth's crust.
  2. noun One, such as a rigid theory, that is outdated or antiquated.
  3. noun Linguistics A word or morpheme that is used only in certain restricted contexts, as kempt in unkempt, but is otherwise obsolete.
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Examples (49)

  • Together with collaborator Donald Brinkman of the Royal Tyrrell Museum of Canada, they later named the fossil Aurorachelys, or aurora turtle. —  Climate Ark Climate Change & Global Warming RSS Newsfeed
  • To me, this is the biggest obstacle in adhering to a long-term, coherent energy policy. 39\% of respondents couldn't name a fossil fuel. —  R-Squared Energy Blog
  • Thus the light I see emitted from certain stars in the night sky is an arche-fossil or fossil-matter as, knowing that light travels at 186,000 miles per second, the scientist is able to discover that this light took millions of years to reach us. —  Larval Subjects .
  • There is no possible compromise between the correlation and the archhe-fossil: once one has acknoledge one, one has thereby disqualified the other. —  Larval Subjects .
  • Yet the arche-fossil is a trace of the ancestral, not the ancestral itself. —  Larval Subjects .
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Words tagged fossil

ingenia · inoceramus · eopuntia · aristodesmus · rodhocetus · georgiacetus · protocetus · dorudon · eobalaenoptera harrisoni · odobenocetops · prosqualodon

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This word has been looked up 109 times.

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Roget's II Roget's II: The New Thesaurus

Allen's Allen's Synonyms and Antonyms

Used in the same context Used in the Same Context

extinct ·  mineral ·  marine ·  terrestrial ·  dinosaur ·  skeleton ·  prehistoric ·  aquatic ·  gigantic ·  organic ·  tropical ·  fossilize

Used in the same contextWord Family

fossil:   fossils
Roget's II: The New Thesaurus, Third Edition by the Editors of the American Heritage® Dictionary. Copyright © 2003, 1995 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. All rights reserved.

Etymologies (2)

Toggle American Heritage etymologies American Heritage Dictionary (1)

  1. From Latin fossilis, dug up, from fossus, past participle of fodere, to dig.

Toggle Century etymologies Century Dictionary (1)

  1. Formerly also fossile; from French fossile = Spanish Fósil = Portuguese fossil = Italian fossile, from Latin fossilis, dug out, dug up, from fodere, past participle fossus, dig.
 

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/ˈfɑsɪl/
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