Definitions
from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 5th Edition.
- noun Any of a group of extinct squidlike cephalopod mollusks of the Jurassic and Cretaceous Periods, having a cone-shaped internal shell.
from The Century Dictionary.
- noun A straight, solid, tapering, dart-shaped fossil, the internal bone or shell of a molluscous animal of the extinct family Belemnitidæ, common in the Chalk and Jurassic limestone.
- noun The animal to which such a bone belonged.
- noun Also called
ceraunite .
from the GNU version of the Collaborative International Dictionary of English.
- noun (Paleon.) A conical calcareous fossil, tapering to a point at the lower extremity, with a conical cavity at the other end, where it is ordinarily broken; but when perfect it contains a small chambered cone, called the phragmocone, prolonged, on one side, into a delicate concave blade; the thunderstone. It is the internal shell of a cephalopod related to the sepia, and belonging to an extinct family. The belemnites are found in rocks of the Jurassic and Cretaceous ages.
from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License.
- noun paleontology An
extinct group ofMesozoic marinecephalopod , very similar in many ways to the modernsquid and closely related to the moderncuttlefish .
from WordNet 3.0 Copyright 2006 by Princeton University. All rights reserved.
- noun a conical calcareous fossil tapering to a point at one end and with a conical cavity at the other end containing (when unbroken) a small chambered phragmocone from the shell of any of numerous extinct cephalopods of the family Belemnitidae
Etymologies
from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 4th Edition
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Examples
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I need hardly translate the word belemnite 'for the benefit of the ladies,' as people used to do in the dark and unemancipated eighteenth century; but as our boys have left off learning Greek just as their sisters are beginning to act the 'Antigone' at private theatricals, I may perhaps be pardoned if I explain, 'for the benefit of the gentlemen,' that the word is practically equivalent to javelin-fossil.
Falling in Love With Other Essays on More Exact Branches of Science Grant Allen 1873
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Shakespeare's country their connection with thunder is well known, so that in all probability a belemnite is the original of the beautiful lines in 'Cymbeline': --
Falling in Love With Other Essays on More Exact Branches of Science Grant Allen 1873
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Stomach contents of a metriorhynchid were described by Dave Martill (1986) and included cephalopod hooklets, a belemnite guard and some long bones that Dave identified as those of the pterosaur Rhamphorhynchus.
My party and those marvellous metriorhynchids Darren Naish 2006
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Stomach contents of a metriorhynchid were described by Dave Martill (1986) and included cephalopod hooklets, a belemnite guard and some long bones that Dave identified as those of the pterosaur Rhamphorhynchus.
Archive 2006-07-01 Darren Naish 2006
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"I'd almost got the loveliest, biggest belemnite, and it broke into three pieces like a slate pencil."
The Youngest Girl in the Fifth A School Story Angela Brazil 1907
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They rejoiced with Miss Lever, however, when she secured a fairly intact belemnite.
The Luckiest Girl in the School Angela Brazil 1907
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The day of the ammonite and the belemnite also now drew to a close, and only a few of these cephalopods were left to survive the period.
The Elements of Geology William Harmon Norton 1900
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Another and very different form of thunderbolt is the belemnite, a common English fossil often preserved in houses in the west country with the same superstitious reverence as the neolithic hatchets.
Falling in Love With Other Essays on More Exact Branches of Science Grant Allen 1873
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Yet it will be a thousand years more, in all probability, before the last thunderbolt ceases to be shown as a curiosity here and there to marvelling visitors, and takes its proper place in some village museum as a belemnite, a meteoric stone, or a polished axe-head of our neolithic ancestors.
Falling in Love With Other Essays on More Exact Branches of Science Grant Allen 1873
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The very form of the belemnite at once suggests the notion of a dart or lance-head, which has gained for it its scientific name.
Falling in Love With Other Essays on More Exact Branches of Science Grant Allen 1873
chained_bear commented on the word belemnite
Usages on phragmocone and nucleus.
September 8, 2008
hernesheir commented on the word belemnite
The Cretaceous PeeDee Belemnite (fossil from the PeeDee formation in South Carolina) provided the original international reference standard for subsequent geochemical analyses and comparisons of delta 13C marine carbonate isotope ratios.
June 7, 2010
fbharjo commented on the word belemnite
Once thought to be fallen thunderbolts.
(New Latin belemnītēs, from Greek belemnon, dart; see gwelə- in Indo-European roots. (American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition)) from etymolgy above - also see etymologies for parable, hyperbole, quell, and abulia for further references to gwelə-
April 18, 2013