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Definitions

American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition

  1. n. Botany The stalk by which a leaf is attached to a stem. Also called leafstalk.
  2. n. Zoology A slender, stalklike part, as that connecting the thorax and abdomen in certain insects.

Century Dictionary and Cyclopedia

  1. n. In botany, a leafstalk; the stalk or support by which the blade or limb of a leaf is attached to the stem. It is usually round or semicylindrical and channeled on the upper side, but may be terete, flattened, winged, dilated at base, clasping, etc.
  2. n. In entomology, the slender sclerite or sclerites by which the abdomen of many insects is united to the thorax. It is prominent in many Hymenoptera, as the slender part of a wasp; it is usually one-jointed, but sometimes two-jointed, and rarely three-jointed. In certain ants it carries one or more swellings which are important in classification. See cuts under Evaniidæ and Atta.

Wiktionary

  1. n. botany The stalk of a leaf, attaching the blade to the stem.
  2. n. entomology A narrow or constricted segment of the body of an insect. Used especially to refer to the metasomal segment of Hymenoptera such as wasps.
  3. n. entomology The stalk at the base of the nest of the paper wasp.

GNU Webster's 1913

  1. n. (Bot.) A leafstalk; the footstalk of a leaf, connecting the blade with the stem. See Illust. of leaf.
  2. n. (Zoöl.) A stalk or peduncle.

WordNet 3.0

  1. n. the slender stem that supports the blade of a leaf

Etymologies

  1. From French pétiole, and its source, Latin petiolus ("little foot"), diminuitive form of pes. (Wiktionary)
  2. Latin petiolus, variant of peciolus, little foot, fruit stalk, probably from *pediciolus, diminutive of pediculus; see pedicel. (American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition)

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