Definitions

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

  • noun An unattached body cell, such as a blood or lymph cell.
  • noun A rounded globular mass of cells, such as the pressure receptor on certain nerve endings.
  • noun A discrete particle, such as a photon or an electron.
  • noun A minute globular particle.

from The Century Dictionary.

  • noun A minute particle, molecule, or atom of matter.
  • noun In zoology and anatomy, some small body regarded by itself and characterized by a qualifying term: usually a body of microscopic size; a cell. See phrases below.
  • noun In botany, specifically, one of several large cells within the endosperm and near the summit of the embryo sac in gymnosperms, from which after fertilization an embryo is developed: so named by R. Brown.
  • noun Same as corposant.
  • noun Of the kidney, small globular masses of dark-red color, found in the cortical substance of the organ, consisting of a central glomerulus of blood-vessels (the Malpighian tuft), and of a membranous capsule which is the beginning of a uriniferous tubule.
  • noun In electricity, a body smaller than an atom, assumed to explain the phenomena of electric discharges in gases, and of radioactivity.

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

  • noun A minute particle; an atom; a molecule.
  • noun (Anat.) A protoplasmic animal cell; esp., such as float free, like blood, lymph, and pus corpuscles; or such as are imbedded in an intercellular matrix, like connective tissue and cartilage corpuscles. See Blood.
  • noun (Physics), archaic An electron.
  • noun (Physiol.) in man, yellowish, biconcave, circular discs varying from 1/3500 to 1/3200 of an inch in diameter and about 1/12400 of an inch thick. They are composed of a colorless stroma filled in with semifluid hæmoglobin and other matters. In most mammals the red corpuscles are circular, but in the camels, birds, reptiles, and the lower vertebrates generally, they are oval, and sometimes more or less spherical in form. In Amphioxus, and most invertebrates, the blood corpuscles are all white or colorless.
  • noun (Physiol.) rounded, slightly flattened, nucleated cells, mainly protoplasmic in composition, and possessed of contractile power. In man, the average size is about 1/2500 of an inch, and they are present in blood in much smaller numbers than the red corpuscles.

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

  • noun A minute particle; an atom; a molecule.
  • noun A protoplasmic animal cell; esp., such as float free, like blood, lymph, and pus corpuscles; or such as are embedded in an intercellular matrix, like connective tissue and cartilage corpuscles.

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

  • noun either of two types of cells (erythrocytes and leukocytes) and sometimes including platelets
  • noun (nontechnical usage) a tiny piece of anything

Etymologies

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

[Latin corpusculum, diminutive of corpus, body; see kwrep- in Indo-European roots.]

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License

From Latin corpusculum, diminutive of corpus ("body").

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Examples

  • There are others, of rare occurrence in chains, which have a clear corpuscle, that is to say, a portion more refractive than other parts of the segments, at one of their extremities.

    The Harvard Classics Volume 38 Scientific Papers (Physiology, Medicine, Surgery, Geology) Various

  • The first theory put forward by Sir J.J. Thomson in explanation of these facts, was that these kathode particles ( "corpuscles" as he termed them) were electrically charged portions of matter, much smaller than the smallest atom; and since the same sort of corpuscle is obtained whatever gas is contained in the vacuum tube, it is reasonable to conclude that the corpuscle is the common unit of all matter.

    Alchemy: Ancient and Modern 1922

  • The corpuscle, which is perfectly visible to the naked eye (and which can be most easily demonstrated in the mesentery of a cat), consists of a number of lamellæ or capsules arranged more or less concentrically around a central clear space, in which the nerve fiber is contained.

    X. The Organs of the Senses and the Common Integument. 1e. Peripheral Terminations of Nerves of General Sensations 1918

  • There are others, of rare occurrence in chains, which have a clear corpuscle, that is to say, a portion more refractive than other parts of the segments, at one of their extremities.

    V. The Physiological Theory of Fermentation. Another Example of Life Without Air-Fermentation of Lactate of Lime 1909

  • The parallel is now plain to the reader: the corpuscle is the Yogi, bent on liberation: the heat which warms him is the Divine Love, centered in his heart, his initiations are the successive emancipations into higher and higher spaces, till he attains

    Four-Dimensional Vistas Claude Fayette Bragdon 1906

  • My good friend and fellow "corpuscle" member of Corpus Christi College, Oxford Fr Paul Haffner, wrote a good book on the thought of Fr Jaki: "Creation and Scientific Creativity: A Study in the Thought of S.L. Jaki."

    Archive 2009-04-01 2009

  • The trouble is that the analysis ” absurdly ” makes it seem as though when two things have one degree of brightness there could be a substantive question which of the two ” x or y ” it was ” as though a degree of brightness were some kind of corpuscle whose association with a thing made it bright (cf. Klagge and Nordmann,

    Wittgenstein's Logical Atomism Proops, Ian 2007

  • My bones will rob me blind, corpuscle by corpuscle.

    Countdown Matt Kang 2010

  • It all starts with the photon, that little corpuscle of light.

    Peter Baksa: Can Quantum Physics Explain God? Peter Baksa 2011

  • I'll stumble into something that takes me down a magic breadcrumb trail and it feels ecstatic and I know I'm onto something and then I can usually find satisfaction to some degree -- not entirely, ever, of course -- I'll know I've put my every corpuscle into it and I don't regret having done it.

    Dylan Brody: Jeanmarie Simpson -- Artivist in the Modern Landscape (Part 2) Dylan Brody 2011

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  • Moreover, the Moon ---

    by Mina Loy

    Face of the skies

    preside

    over our wonder.

    Fluorescent

    truant of heaven

    draw us under.

    Silver, circular corpse

    your decease

    infects us with unendurable ease,

    touching nerve-terminals

    to thermal icicles

    Coercive as coma, frail as bloom

    innuendoes of your inverse dawn

    suffuse the self;

    our every corpuscle become an elf.

    December 28, 2006