Definitions

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

  • noun Anatomy A slender cordlike strand or band, especially.
  • noun A bundle of nerve fibers in a nerve trunk.
  • noun One of three major divisions of white matter in the spinal cord, consisting of fasciculi.
  • noun The umbilical cord.
  • noun Botany A stalk connecting an ovule or a seed with the placenta.

from The Century Dictionary.

  • noun A small rope or cord.
  • noun In early German land-law, a cord or slender rope with which land was measured.
  • noun In old physics, a self-contracting ether, assumed by some of those who rejected the doctrine of the elasticity of the air.
  • noun In botany, same as funicle, 4.
  • noun In anat.: The navel-string or umbilical cord, connecting the fetus with the placenta, and so with the parent. Also funis and funicle.
  • noun One of the smaller bundles of a nerve which are inclosed in a special sheath of neurilemma or perineurium. See nerve.
  • noun In Polyzoa, the gastroparietal band or ligament connecting the alimentary eanal with the wall of the endocyst. See cut under Plumatella.
  • noun In Myriapoda, a cord connecting the anal end of the embryo with the so-called amnion.
  • noun In entomology, that part of the flagellum of the antenna which is between the pedicel and the club; the funicle: used especially of hymenopterous insects. Also funicule.
  • noun In Protozoa, specifically, the filament or slender thread which connects the several nodules of a compound endoplast, as the component nuclear masses in such infusorians as Loxodes and Loxophyllum. Saville Kent.
  • noun Same as Funiculina

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

  • noun (Anat.) A cord, baud, or bundle of fibers; esp., one of the small bundles of fibers, of which large nerves are made up; applied also to different bands of white matter in the brain and spinal cord.
  • noun A short cord which connects the embryo of some myriapods with the amnion.
  • noun In Bryozoa, an organ extending back from the stomach. See Bryozoa, and Phylactolema.

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

  • noun anatomy Any of several cordlike structures, especially the umbilical cord, or a bundle of nerve fibres in the spinal cord
  • noun botany A stalk that connects the seed (or ovule) with the placenta

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

  • noun the stalk of a plant ovule or seed
  • noun any of several body structure resembling a cord

Etymologies

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

[Latin fūniculus, slender rope, diminutive of fūnis, rope.]

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License

From Latin fūniculus ("cord"), diminutive from fūnis ("cord") + -culus.

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