acicular - Wiktionary, the free dictionary


Article Images
 
Acicular leaf.
 
Anthodites at the Skyline Caverns in Virginia, US. The individual crystals of anthodites develop in an acicular form and often branch out as they grow.

From Latin aciculāris.

acicular (not comparable)

  1. Needle-shaped; slender like a needle or bristle.
    • 1992, Oliver Sacks, Migraine, Berkeley: University of California Press, revised and expanded edition, Part 5, Chapter 17, p. 279,[1]
      Sometimes these networks have an acicular or crystalline appearance, and may grow visibly, sometimes with sudden jerks, “like frost on a windowpane,” or “primitive plants.”
  2. Having sharp points like needles.
  3. (botany) Of a leaf, slender and pointed, needle-like.

    • 1860, John Ruskin, chapter 3, in Modern Painters […], volume V, London: Smith, Elder and Co., […], →OCLC, part VIII (Of Ideas of Relation:—I. Of Invention Formal.), page 189:

      […] though fond of foliage, their trees always had a tendency to congeal into little acicular thorn-hedges, and never tossed free.

needle-shaped

acicular m or f (plural aciculares)

  1. acicular (needle-shaped)

Borrowed from French aciculaire.

acicular m or n (feminine singular aciculară, masculine plural aciculari, feminine and neuter plural aciculare)

  1. acicular
  • IPA(key): (Spain) /aθikuˈlaɾ/ [a.θi.kuˈlaɾ]
  • IPA(key): (Latin America, Philippines) /asikuˈlaɾ/ [a.si.kuˈlaɾ]
  • Rhymes: -aɾ
  • Syllabification: a‧ci‧cu‧lar

acicular m or f (masculine and feminine plural aciculares)

  1. acicular