Definitions

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

  • adjective Tapering at each end; spindle-shaped.

from The Century Dictionary.

  • Tapering both ways from the middle: applied in botany to certain roots, as the radish, and in zoölogy to joints, organs, marks, etc., which are broadest in the middle and diminish regularly and rapidly to the ends.
  • In ichthyology, having the dorsal and ventral contours symmetrical, and approximated to each other from a middle point toward each end, as the mackerel, tunny, and stickle back. Also fusate, fusoid.

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

  • adjective Shaped like a spindle; shaped like a cylinder that tapers at each end

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

  • adjective zoology Shaped like a spindle; tapering at each end.

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

  • adjective tapering at each end

Etymologies

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

[Latin fūsus, spindle + –form.]

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License

From Latin fusus ("spindle") + -iform.

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Examples

  • And that process of identification takes place in a place which we call the fusiform gyrus which as we have seen is damaged in patients with face blindness or prosopognosia ...

    Boing Boing: April 6, 2003 - April 12, 2003 Archives 2003

  • And if you look, tucked away inside the inner surface of the temporal lobes -- you can't see it there -- is a little structure called the fusiform gyrus.

    VS Ramachandran on your mind 2007

  • Researchers still can't pinpoint the cause but say it's most likely linked to an area of the brain called the fusiform gyrus, which shows activity in response to seeing faces.

    CNN Transcript Feb 6, 2007 2007

  • There are in fact 30 areas in the back of your brain concerned with just vision, and after processing all that, the message goes to a small structure called the fusiform gyrus, where you perceive faces.

    VS Ramachandran on your mind 2007

  • There are in fact 30 areas in the back of your brain concerned with just vision, and after processing all that, the message goes to a small structure called the fusiform gyrus, where you perceive faces.

    VS Ramachandran on your mind 2007

  • Researchers still can't pinpoint the cause, but say it's most likely linked to an area of the brain called the fusiform gyrus, which shows activity in response to seeing faces.

    CNN Transcript Feb 6, 2007 2007

  • And if you look, tucked away inside the inner surface of the temporal lobes -- you can't see it there -- is a little structure called the fusiform gyrus.

    VS Ramachandran on your mind 2007

  • There are in fact 30 areas in the back of your brain concerned with just vision, and after processing all that, the message goes to a small structure called the fusiform gyrus, where you perceive faces.

    VS Ramachandran on your mind 2007

  • And if you look, tucked away inside the inner surface of the temporal lobes -- you can't see it there -- is a little structure called the fusiform gyrus.

    VS Ramachandran on your mind 2007

  • Until recently, it was thought that the condition only arose after brain injury - usually because of damage to an area of the brain known as the fusiform gyrus.

    Mind Hacks: Fading faces 2006

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