Definitions

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

  • noun A membranous, often club-shaped structure in ascomycetes in which karyogamy occurs, followed by the formation of eight haploid ascospores.

from The Century Dictionary.

  • noun In botany, the spore-case of lichens and ascomycetous fungi, consisting of a single cell, usually the swollen terminal cell of a branch of a hypha, from the protoplasm of which the spores (typically 8) are produced. Also called ascidium and theca.
  • noun In archœol., same as askos.

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

  • noun (Bot.) A small membranous bladder or tube in which are inclosed the seedlike reproductive particles or sporules of lichens and certain fungi.

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

  • noun A sac-shaped cell present in ascomycete fungi; it is a reproductive cell in which meiosis and an additional cell division produce eight spores.

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

  • noun saclike structure in which ascospores are formed through sexual reproduction of ascomycetes

Etymologies

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

[New Latin, from Greek askos, bag.]

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License

From Ancient Greek ἀσκός (askos, "a sac").

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