Definitions

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

  • noun The usually long process of a nerve fiber that generally conducts impulses away from the body of the nerve cell.

from The Century Dictionary.

  • noun In anatomy, the body-axis; the mesal, longitudinal, skeletal axis of the body, represented in Branchiostoma and embryos by a membranogelatinous notochord, and in most adult vertebrates by the cartilaginous or osseous centra of the vertebræ and the base of the skull. Wilder, N. Y. Med. Jour., Aug. 2, 1884, p. 113. Also called axis.
  • noun The efferent or axis-cylinder process of a nerve-cell. Also spelled axone.

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

  • noun cytology A nerve fibre which is a long slender projection of a nerve cell, and which conducts nerve impulses away from the body of the cell to a synapse.

from WordNet 3.0 Copyright 2006 by Princeton University. All rights reserved.

  • noun long nerve fiber that conducts away from the cell body of the neuron

Etymologies

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

[Greek axōn, axis.]

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License

From Ancient Greek ἄξων (axōn, "axis").

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Examples

Comments

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  • "... a sense of danger communicates itself among people in a confined setting: hospital emergency room, surgical suite, train car, ship; urgency flashes from one person to the next without speech, like the impulse down a neuron's axon to the dendrites of another."

    —Diana Gabaldon, A Breath of Snow and Ashes (New York: Bantam Dell, 2005), 804

    February 3, 2010