Definitions

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

  • noun A covering of fine, soft hair, as on a leaf, insect, or newborn child.

from The Century Dictionary.

  • noun In anatomy, the coat of delicate downy hairs with which the human fetus is covered for some time before birth.
  • noun In botany and zoology, the cottony or woolly growth on the surface of some leaves, fruits, insects, etc.

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

  • noun (Anat.) The soft woolly hair which covers most parts of the mammal fetus, and in man is shed before or soon after birth.

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

  • noun The soft down or fine hair, specifically as covering the human foetus or a tumorous area

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

  • noun the fine downy hair covering a human fetus; normally shed during the ninth month of gestation

Etymologies

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

[Middle English, pith, from Latin lānūgō, down, from lāna, wool.]

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License

Latin lana ("wool")

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Examples

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  • "Week 38: Most of the baby's downy hair, lanugo, and whitish coating, vernix, is disappearing."

    WebMD

    October 3, 2007