Definitions

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

  • noun A thin cartilaginous strip on the underside of the tongue of certain carnivorous mammals, such as dogs.

from The Century Dictionary.

  • noun A long vermiform rod of cartilage or fibrous tissue in the middle line and under surface of the tongue of a carnivore; the glossohyal of a carnivore; the so-called “worm” of a dog's tongue.
  • noun [capitalized] A Fabrician genus of Coleoptera: same as Cantharis.

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

  • noun (Anat.) A fibrous and muscular band lying within the longitudinal axis of the tongue in many mammals, as the dog.

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

  • noun anatomy, archaic A fibrous muscular band lying within the longitudinal axis of the tongue in many mammals, such as the dog.

Etymologies

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

[Latin, worm under a dog's tongue (said to cause madness), from Greek lussa, lutta, madness, rabies; see wl̥kwo- in Indo-European roots.]

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License

Ancient Greek

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  • Who knew?

    January 5, 2011