Definitions
American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition
- n. Any of various stony corals of the order Madreporaria, which includes the reef builders of tropical seas.
Century Dictionary and Cyclopedia
- n. An animal, or a coral, of the genus Madrepora or family Madreporidœ; the polypite or the polypidom of a perforate madreporarian: a name loosely extended to any stone-coral with madre poriform cavities or openings. In true madrepore the animal or polypite is hexameral with twelve short tentacles, and the polypidom is of branching form and stony hardness. Madrepore coral consists of corbonate of as Carbonate of lime, with traces of animal matter, and is formed by gradual deposition in the tissues of the compound polyp, so that in course of time the whole presents the appearance of a number of polyps supported on an extraneous body. When the animal matter has been removed madrepore is of a white color, wrinkled on the surface, and full of little cavities, in each of which an individual polyp was lodged, the radiating septa of the cavities corresponding to the internal divisions of the animal. Madrepores raise up walls and reefs of coral rocks with considerable rapidity in tropical climates.
Wiktionary
GNU Webster's 1913
- n. (Zoöl.) Any coral of the genus Madrepora, a group of corals having calcareous skeletons aggregations of which form reefs and islands; formerly, often applied to any stony coral.
WordNet 3.0
- n. corals having calcareous skeletons aggregations of which form reefs and islands
Etymologies
- From French madrépore, from Italian madrepora, from madre ("mother"), from Latin mater + poro ("pore"), from Latin porus (Wiktionary)
- Italian madrepora : madre, mother (from Latin māter, mātr-) + -pora (alteration of poro, tufa, pore, from Late Latin porus, passageway; see pore, or from Latin pōrus, calcareous stone, stalactite, from Greek pōros). (American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition)
Examples
“But in order to do this, he must have been thoroughly familiar with the enormous madrepore of the sewer in all its ramifications and in all its openings.”
“The sub-soil of Paris, if the eye could penetrate its surface, would present the aspect of a colossal madrepore.”
“This is a great mass of madrepore, and in the living state every one of the ends of these branches was terminated by a beautiful little polype, like a sea anemone, and all the skeleton was covered by a soft body which united the polypes together.”
““Still assuming that I am an individual, and human, and not a madrepore of linked beans.” byssus.”
““And once again, her skirt, the oriflamme of her hair – but seen, as always, from the back.” madrepore.”
“The number of houses in Souakin is about six hundred, of which two-thirds are in ruins, for the madrepore with which they are built soon decays, unless constantly kept in repair.”
“Those here are of reddish variegated, hardened sandstone, with madrepore holes in it.”
“Shaykh Nur had been ordered to take rooms for me in a vast pile of madrepore — unfossilized coral, a recent formation, — once the palace of Mohammed bin Aun, and now converted into a Wakalah.”
“No buildings of ancient date are observed in Djidda, the madrepore being of such a nature that it rapidly decays when exposed to the rain and moist atmosphere prevalent here.”
“As the branches are open, this would not be equivalent to more than half an inch in height of solid coral for the whole surface covered by the madrepore; and, as they are also porous, to not over three-eighths of an inch of solid limestone.”
Lists
These user-created lists contain the word ‘madrepore’.
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Interesting words
A list of words that are odd or words that I have looked up.
concupiscence, brize, scree, scoria, forestaff, spanaemia, valetudinarianism, distasture, pyrethrum, laudanum, gentian, bicameral and 11250 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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Words Covered in Faery Dust (M)
words that evoke magic, mystery, mayhem, magnificence or anything else that glimmers in the grass
mace, macintosh, madras, magenta, magic 8 ball, magma, mahogany, maiden, mail, mainsail, maize, malachite and 169 more...
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Just 'cause I like 'em, M
metamerism, malady, margin, marauder, maverick, mercury, mirth, mandible, macerate, meteor, manumission, mica and 292 more...
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Spelling Bee list 2011
Abalone, ablution, absolution, aboriginally, abstemious, academician, acclamation, accommodation, acculturation, acetic, acetone, acme and 590 more...
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looked up
Words I've come across while reading and looked up in the dictionary.
deesis, pendentive, revetment, aedicule, stemma, patera, ephod, entrepot, corbel, exedra, volute, archivolt and 1408 more...
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Proustian
vetiver, cheval-glass, ossature, transvertebration, orris-root, ferruginous, viaticum, rep, senescence, bengal light, madeleine, lime-blossom and 109 more...
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out forms
Sir Francis Bacon: "There is no excellent beauty that hath not some strangeness in the proportion."
chinoiserie, rhyparography, Ludibrium, Tarasque, Trabant, joropo, blocage, crannog, whitsour, zampogna, scamillus, Kacapi and 77 more...
Tweets
Looking for tweets for madrepore.
yarb A new visitor arrived at the Abbey, in the person of Mr Asterias, the ichthyologist. This gentleman had passed his life in seeking the living wonders of the deep through the four quarters of the world; he had a cabinet of stuffed and dried fishes, of shells, sea-weeds, corals, and madrepores, that was the admiration and envy of the Royal Society.
- Thomas Love Peacock, Nightmare Abbey, ch. 7 Sep 3, 2008
knitandpurl "I gazed on this momentary apotheosis with a perturbation which was partly soothed by feeling that I myself was unknown to the Immortals; the Duchess had indeed seen me once with her husband, but could surely have kept no memory of that, and I was not distressed that she should find herself, owing to the position that she occupied in the box, gazing down upon the nameless, collective madrepores of the audience in the stalls, for I was happily aware that my being was dissolved in their midst, when, at the moment in which, by virtue of the laws of refraction, the blurred shaped of the protozoon devoid of any individual existence which was myself must have come to be reflected in the impassive current of those two blue eyes, I saw a ray illumine them: the Duchess, goddess turned woman, and appearing in that moment a thousand times more lovely, raised towards me the white-gloved hand which had been resting on the balustrade of the box and waved it in token of friendship; my gaze was caught in the spontaneous incandescence of the flashing eyes of the Princess, who had unwittingly set them ablaze merely by turning her head to see who it might be that her cousin was thus greeting: and the latter, who had recognized me, poured upon me the sparkling and celestial shower of her smile."
--The Guermantes Way by Marcel Proust, translated by C.K. Scott Moncrieff and Terence Kilmartin, Revised by D.J. Enright, pp 68-69 of the Modern Library paperback edition Aug 4, 2008