Definitions
from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 5th Edition.
- noun Any of various extinct, chiefly Carboniferous trees of the genus Calamites, anatomically similar to the modern-day herbaceous horsetails (Equisetum).
from The Century Dictionary.
- noun A fossil of the genus Calamites.
- noun A variety of tremolite occurring in imperfect or rounded prismatic crystals, longitudinally striated, and sometimes resembling a reed.
from the GNU version of the Collaborative International Dictionary of English.
- noun (Paleon.) A fossil plant of the coal formation, having the general form of plants of the modern Equiseta (the Horsetail or Scouring Rush family) but sometimes attaining the height of trees, and having the stem more or less woody within. See
acrogen , andasterophyllite .
from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License.
- noun A genus of extinct
treelike horsetails , Calamites.
Etymologies
from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 4th Edition
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Examples
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No, non si parla di allucinazioni da sbornia; ne si tratta di calamite da frigorifero, ma di una nuova e sconosciuta forza della natura.
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Que toute la posterite d'Adam, est coupable en luy de sa desobeissance, infectee de sa corruption, et tombee dans la meme calamite jusques aus petits Enfans des le ventre de leur Mere, d'ou vient le nom de Peche orginel.
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In no other age did the world ever witness such a flora; the youth of the earth was peculiarly a green and umbrageous youth — a youth of dusk and tangled forests, of huge pines and stately araucarians, of the reed-like calamite, the tall tree-fern, the sculptured sigillaria, and the hirsute lepidodendrons.
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Lycopodite which not a little resembles one of the commonest of our club mosses, -- _Lycopodium clavatum_, -- with a minute fern and a large striated plant resembling a calamite, and evidently allied to an existing genus of Acrogens, the equisetaceæ.
The Testimony of the Rocks or, Geology in Its Bearings on the Two Theologies, Natural and Revealed Hugh Miller 1829
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The apparent expansion, however, in the Old Red specimen may be simply a result of compression in its upper part: the under part certainly much resembles, in the dome-like symmetry of its outline, the radical termination of a solitary calamite.
The Testimony of the Rocks or, Geology in Its Bearings on the Two Theologies, Natural and Revealed Hugh Miller 1829
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In no other age did the world ever witness such a flora: the youth of the earth was peculiarly a green and umbrageous youth, -- a youth of dusk and tangled forests, of huge pines and stately araucarians, of the reed-like calamite, the tall tree-fern, the sculptured sigillaria, and the hirsute lepidodendron.
The Testimony of the Rocks or, Geology in Its Bearings on the Two Theologies, Natural and Revealed Hugh Miller 1829
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Hibernicus divested of the leaflets, goes on to describe the apparent calamite of the formation.
The Testimony of the Rocks or, Geology in Its Bearings on the Two Theologies, Natural and Revealed Hugh Miller 1829
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Mr. Duncan accompanies his description with a figure of the organism described, which, however, rather resembles the bulb of a liliaceous plant than the root of a calamite, which in all the better preserved, specimens contracts, instead of expanding, as it descends.
The Testimony of the Rocks or, Geology in Its Bearings on the Two Theologies, Natural and Revealed Hugh Miller 1829
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British Ferns, that the relation of this special family to the Coniferæ is so strong, both in external and internal structure, that it is not without some hesitation he places them among the fern allies; and it has been ascertained by Mr. Dawes, in his researches regarding the calamite, that in its internal structure this apparent representative of Equiseta in the earlier ages of the world united "a network of quadrangular tissue similar to that of Coniferæ to other quadrangular cells arranged in perpendicular series," like the cells of plants of a humbler order.
The Testimony of the Rocks or, Geology in Its Bearings on the Two Theologies, Natural and Revealed Hugh Miller 1829
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We see only detached bits of that green web which has covered our earth ever since the dry land first appeared; but the web itself seems to have been continuous throughout all time; though ever as breadth after breadth issued from the creative loom, the pattern has altered, and the sculpturesque and graceful forms that illustrated its first beginnings and its middle spaces have yielded to flowers of richer color and blow, and fruits of fairer shade and outline; and for gigantic club mosses stretching forth their hirsute arms, goodly trees of the Lord have expanded their great boughs; and for the barren fern and the calamite, clustering in thickets beside the waters, or spreading on flowerless hill slopes, luxuriant orchards have yielded their ruddy flush, and rich harvests their golden gleam.
The Testimony of the Rocks or, Geology in Its Bearings on the Two Theologies, Natural and Revealed Hugh Miller 1829
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