Definitions

from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 5th Edition.

  • noun A small, specialized, cushionlike area on a cactus from which hairs, glochids, spines, branches, or flowers may arise.

from The Century Dictionary.

  • noun Same as areola.

from the GNU version of the Collaborative International Dictionary of English.

  • noun Same as areola.

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License.

  • noun botany The smallest enclosures created by the veins of a leaf.

Etymologies

from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 4th Edition

[French aréole, from Latin āreola, small open space; see areola.]

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Examples

  • The milk dripped faster in response, then suddenly the areole around the nipple contracted and the milk spurted out in a tiny jet of surprising force.

    Sick Cycle Carousel 2010

  • He circled her areole with the feathers and watched as the nipple hardened.

    Tutoring Lady Jane Featherstone, Charlotte 2005

  • Accessory cell: a cell not commonly present in the group; in some orders of definite location as, e.g. in Lepidoptera, usually a small cell at the end of the subcosta, giving rise directly or indirectly to veins 7 to 10: = 1st radius 2 (Comst.); = areole.

    Explanation of Terms Used in Entomology John. B. Smith

  • Tubercles dark green, conical, 1/3 in. long, ½ in. broad at base, naked at the point, but with four to six spines springing from the areole a little below the point; spines ash-coloured, stiff, black-tipped.

    Cactus Culture for Amateurs Being Descriptions of the Various Cactuses Grown in This Country, With Full and Practical Instructions for Their Successful Cultivation W. Watson

  • These anorexic bulimic diet pill and diarrhea ridden mental cases basically lose the whole nipple and most of the areole.

    TheSpoof.com : Spoof News : Front Page 2009

  • Oh, with this view of death and with this hope of joining love's buried ones again, you can gather those that yet remain, and talk to them of those you put, cold and speechless, in their bed of clay; and while their bodies lie exposed to the winter's storm or to the summer's heat, you can point the living to that cheering promise which spans, as with an areole of glory, the graves of buried love; you can tell them they shall meet their departed kindred in a better home.

    The Christian Home Samuel Philips

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