Definitions

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

  • intransitive verb To join by anastomosis.
  • intransitive verb To be connected by anastomosis, as blood vessels.

from The Century Dictionary.

  • To communicate or unite by anastomosis; intercommunicate, inosculate, or run into one another: said chiefly of vessels conveying fluid, as blood or lymph, as when arteries unite with one another or with veins.
  • To connect by anastomosis.

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

  • intransitive verb (Anat. & Bot.) To inosculate; to intercommunicate by anastomosis, as the arteries and veins.
  • intransitive verb Of any channels or lines, to meet and unite or run into each other, as rivers; to coalesce; to interjoin.

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

  • verb transitive To join (two or more things) by anastomosis
  • verb intransitive To join by anastomosis
  • adjective botany, mycology Joined or run together.

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

  • verb cause to join or open into each other by anastomosis
  • verb come together or open into each other

Etymologies

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

[Back-formation from anastomosis.]

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Examples

  • To the north they probably anastomose with the Camarones, the Rumbi, the Kwa, the

    Two Trips to Gorilla Land and the Cataracts of the Congo 2003

  • We now reach the confluence of the Nkonio or north-eastern, with the Mbokwe, or eastern branch, which anastomose to form the Gaboon; the latter, being apparently the larger of the two, preserves the title Mpolo.

    Two Trips to Gorilla Land and the Cataracts of the Congo 2003

  • Acacia auriculiformis looks much like Acacia aulacocarpa and Acacia crassicarpa (see below), but the fine veins of the phyllodes are anastomose (interconnected), the pods are narrower and more undulate than those of Acacia aulacocarpa, and the funicle encircles each seed.

    Chapter 8 1983

  • In whatever condition the two vessels may be found, there will always be seen ramifying around the ankle-joint, articular branches, which anastomose freely with each other and with those of the anterior tibial.

    Surgical Anatomy Joseph Maclise

  • Other special branches derived from the parent vessel above and below the several joints ramify and anastomose so very freely over the surfaces of these parts, and seem to pass in reference to them out of their direct course, that to effect this mode of distribution appears to be no less immediate a design than to support the structures of which the joints are composed.

    Surgical Anatomy Joseph Maclise

  • The two coronary arteries of the heart arise from the systemic aorta immediately outside the semilunar valves, situated in the root of this vessel, and in passing right and left along the auriculo-ventricular furrows, they send off some branches for the supply of the organ itself, and others by which both vessels anastomose freely around its base and apex.

    Surgical Anatomy Joseph Maclise

  • The vessels of the left heart do not anastomose, for its veins are pulmonary, and its arteries are systemic.

    Surgical Anatomy Joseph Maclise

  • In the lungs, the arteries of the right heart and the veins of the left anastomose.

    Surgical Anatomy Joseph Maclise

  • The arteries of the right and left hearts cannot anastomose, for the former are pulmonary, and the latter are systemic; and neither can the veins of the right and left hearts, for a similar reason.

    Surgical Anatomy Joseph Maclise

  • The two superior and inferior articular branches anastomose freely around the knee behind, laterally, and in front, where they are joined by the terminal branches of the anastomotic, from the femoral, and by those of the recurrent, from the anterior tibial.

    Surgical Anatomy Joseph Maclise

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  • "But age comes quickest and most irremediable to mechanical things. The life of a sparking-plug is a fierce tropical existence of days only. No healing leucocytes rush to the aid of a cracked cylinder, nor anastomosing tributaries expand to carry the life-blood of a choked feed-pipe."

    Poet's Pub by Eric Linklater, pp 279-280 of the Orkney Edition hardcover

    November 25, 2011