dendrite

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

• noun A mineral crystallizing in another mineral in the form of a branching or treelike mark.
• noun A rock or mineral bearing such a mark or marks.
• noun A branched protoplasmic extension of a nerve cell that conducts impulses from adjacent cells inward toward the cell body. A single nerve may possess many dendrites.

from The Century Dictionary.

• noun In neural., one of the protoplasmic processes of a nerve-cell: opposed to *neurite, the axis-cylinder. See cut at *neuron.
• noun A stone or a mineral on or in which are figures resembling shrubs, trees, or mosses.
• noun A complex crystalline growth of arborescent form, such as is common with metallic silver and copper.

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

• noun (Min.) A stone or mineral on or in which are branching figures resembling shrubs or trees, produced by a foreign mineral, usually an oxide of manganese, as in the moss agate; also, a crystallized mineral having an arborescent form, e. g., gold or silver; an arborization.

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

• noun cytology A slender projection of a nerve cell which conducts nerve impulses from a synapse to the body of the cell; a dendron.
• noun cytology Slender cell process emanating from the cell bodies of dendritic cells and follicular dendritic cells of the immune system.
• noun crystallography, metallurgy tree-like structure of crystals growing as material crystallizes

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

• noun short fiber that conducts toward the cell body of the neuron