receptacle

American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition

1. n. A container that holds items or matter.
2. n. Botany The expanded tip of a flower stalk or axis that bears the floral organs or the group of flowers in a head.
3. n. Electronics A fitting connected to a power supply and equipped to receive a plug.

Century Dictionary and Cyclopedia

1. n. That which receives or holds anything for rest or deposit; a storing-place; a repository; a container; any space, open or closed, that serves for reception and keeping.
2. n. In botany:
3. n. In a single flower, the more or less enlarged and peculiarly developed apex of the peduncle or pedicel, upon which all the organs of the flower are directly or indirectly borne: the Linnæan and usual name: same as the more specific and proper torus of De Candolle and the thalamus of Tournefort. The receptacle varies in size and texture. In form it may be convex or conical (as most often), elongated, as in Magnolia. or concave, as in the rose; it may develop into a stipe, gynobase, disk, carpophore, or hypanthium (see these words), or it may greatly enlarge in fruit, as in the strawberry. As belonging to a single flower, sometimes termed proper receptacle.
4. n. In an inflorescence, the axis or rachis of a head or other short dense cluster; most often. the expanded disk-like summit of the peduncle in Compositæ (dandelion, etc.) on which are borne the florets of the head, surrounded by an involucre of bracts; a clinanthium. In contrast with the above, sometimes called common receptacle.
5. n. In an ovary, same as placenta. 4.
6. n. Among cryptogams
7. n. In the vascular class, the placenta.
8. n. In Marchantiaceæ, one of the umbrella-like branches of the thallus, upon which the reproductive organs are borne.
9. n. In Fucaceæ, a part of the thallus in which conceptacles (see conceptacle) are congregated. They are either terminal portions of branches or parts sustained above water by air-bladders.
10. n. In Fungi, sometimes same as stroma; in Ascomycetes, same as pycnidium, 1 (also the stalk of a discocarp); in Phalloideæ, the inner part of the sporophore, supporting the gleba.
11. n. In lichens, the cup containing the soredia. The term has some other analogous applications.
12. n. In zoology and anatomy, a part or an organ which receives and contains or detains a secretion; a receptaculum: as, the gall-bladder is the receptacle of the bile.

Wiktionary

1. n. A container.
2. n. botany The part of the flower stalk (peduncle or pedicel) to which the floral parts are attached; also torus.
3. n. electricity, US A contact device installed at an outlet for the connection of an attachment plug and flexible cord to supply portable equipment or appliances.

GNU Webster's 1913

1. n. That which serves, or is used, for receiving and containing something, as for examople, a basket, a vase, a bag, a reservoir; a repository.
2. n. The apex of the flower stalk, from which the organs of the flower grow, or into which they are inserted. See Illust. of Flower, and Ovary.
3. n. The dilated apex of a pedicel which serves as a common support to a head of flowers.
4. n. An intercellular cavity containing oil or resin or other matters.
5. n. A special branch which bears the fructification in many cryptogamous plants.

WordNet 3.0

1. n. an electrical (or electronic) fitting that is connected to a source of power and equipped to receive an insert
2. n. a container that is used to put or keep things in
3. n. enlarged tip of a stem that bears the floral parts