Definitions
from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 5th Edition.
- noun A thin cartilaginous strip on the underside of the tongue of certain carnivorous mammals, such as dogs.
from The Century Dictionary.
- noun A long vermiform rod of cartilage or fibrous tissue in the middle line and under surface of the tongue of a carnivore; the glossohyal of a carnivore; the so-called “worm” of a dog's tongue.
- noun [capitalized] A Fabrician genus of Coleoptera: same as
Cantharis .
from the GNU version of the Collaborative International Dictionary of English.
- noun (Anat.) A fibrous and muscular band lying within the longitudinal axis of the tongue in many mammals, as the dog.
from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License.
- noun anatomy, archaic A
fibrous muscular band lying within thelongitudinal axis of thetongue in manymammals , such as thedog .
Etymologies
from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 4th Edition
[Latin, worm under a dog's tongue (said to cause madness), from Greek lussa, lutta, madness, rabies; see wl̥kwo- in Indo-European roots.]
from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License
Ancient Greek
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Examples
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Pliny, and some subsequent writers, attributed rabies to a worm under the animal's tongue which they called ` ` lytta. ''
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Pliny, and some subsequent writers, attributed rabies to a worm under the animal's tongue which they called "lytta."
ruzuzu commented on the word lytta
Who knew?
January 5, 2011