Definitions
from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 5th Edition.
- noun An unattached body cell, such as a blood or lymph cell.
- noun A rounded globular mass of cells, such as the pressure receptor on certain nerve endings.
- noun A discrete particle, such as a photon or an electron.
- noun A minute globular particle.
from The Century Dictionary.
- noun A minute particle, molecule, or atom of matter.
- noun In zoology and anatomy, some small body regarded by itself and characterized by a qualifying term: usually a body of microscopic size; a cell. See phrases below.
- noun In botany, specifically, one of several large cells within the endosperm and near the summit of the embryo sac in gymnosperms, from which after fertilization an embryo is developed: so named by R. Brown.
- noun Same as
corposant . - noun Of the kidney, small globular masses of dark-red color, found in the cortical substance of the organ, consisting of a central glomerulus of blood-vessels (the Malpighian tuft), and of a membranous capsule which is the beginning of a uriniferous tubule.
- noun In electricity, a body smaller than an atom, assumed to explain the phenomena of electric discharges in gases, and of radioactivity.
from the GNU version of the Collaborative International Dictionary of English.
- noun A minute particle; an atom; a molecule.
- noun (Anat.) A protoplasmic animal cell; esp., such as float free, like blood, lymph, and pus
corpuscles ; or such as are imbedded in an intercellular matrix, like connective tissue and cartilagecorpuscles . SeeBlood . - noun (Physics), archaic An electron.
- noun (Physiol.) in man, yellowish, biconcave, circular discs varying from 1/3500 to 1/3200 of an inch in diameter and about 1/12400 of an inch thick. They are composed of a colorless stroma filled in with semifluid hæmoglobin and other matters. In most mammals the red corpuscles are circular, but in the camels, birds, reptiles, and the lower vertebrates generally, they are oval, and sometimes more or less spherical in form. In Amphioxus, and most invertebrates, the blood corpuscles are all white or colorless.
- noun (Physiol.) rounded, slightly flattened, nucleated cells, mainly protoplasmic in composition, and possessed of contractile power. In man, the average size is about 1/2500 of an inch, and they are present in blood in much smaller numbers than the red corpuscles.
from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License.
- noun A
minute particle; an atom; a molecule. - noun A
protoplasmic animal cell; esp., such as float free, like blood, lymph, and pus corpuscles; or such as areembedded in an intercellular matrix, like connective tissue and cartilage corpuscles.
from WordNet 3.0 Copyright 2006 by Princeton University. All rights reserved.
- noun either of two types of cells (erythrocytes and leukocytes) and sometimes including platelets
- noun (nontechnical usage) a tiny piece of anything
Etymologies
from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 4th Edition
from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License
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Examples
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There are others, of rare occurrence in chains, which have a clear corpuscle, that is to say, a portion more refractive than other parts of the segments, at one of their extremities.
The Harvard Classics Volume 38 Scientific Papers (Physiology, Medicine, Surgery, Geology) Various
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The first theory put forward by Sir J.J. Thomson in explanation of these facts, was that these kathode particles ( "corpuscles" as he termed them) were electrically charged portions of matter, much smaller than the smallest atom; and since the same sort of corpuscle is obtained whatever gas is contained in the vacuum tube, it is reasonable to conclude that the corpuscle is the common unit of all matter.
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The corpuscle, which is perfectly visible to the naked eye (and which can be most easily demonstrated in the mesentery of a cat), consists of a number of lamellæ or capsules arranged more or less concentrically around a central clear space, in which the nerve fiber is contained.
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There are others, of rare occurrence in chains, which have a clear corpuscle, that is to say, a portion more refractive than other parts of the segments, at one of their extremities.
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The parallel is now plain to the reader: the corpuscle is the Yogi, bent on liberation: the heat which warms him is the Divine Love, centered in his heart, his initiations are the successive emancipations into higher and higher spaces, till he attains
Four-Dimensional Vistas Claude Fayette Bragdon 1906
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My good friend and fellow "corpuscle" member of Corpus Christi College, Oxford Fr Paul Haffner, wrote a good book on the thought of Fr Jaki: "Creation and Scientific Creativity: A Study in the Thought of S.L. Jaki."
Archive 2009-04-01 2009
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The trouble is that the analysis ” absurdly ” makes it seem as though when two things have one degree of brightness there could be a substantive question which of the two ” x or y ” it was ” as though a degree of brightness were some kind of corpuscle whose association with a thing made it bright (cf. Klagge and Nordmann,
Wittgenstein's Logical Atomism Proops, Ian 2007
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My bones will rob me blind, corpuscle by corpuscle.
Countdown Matt Kang 2010
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It all starts with the photon, that little corpuscle of light.
Peter Baksa: Can Quantum Physics Explain God? Peter Baksa 2011
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I'll stumble into something that takes me down a magic breadcrumb trail and it feels ecstatic and I know I'm onto something and then I can usually find satisfaction to some degree -- not entirely, ever, of course -- I'll know I've put my every corpuscle into it and I don't regret having done it.
Dylan Brody: Jeanmarie Simpson -- Artivist in the Modern Landscape (Part 2) Dylan Brody 2011
exquisite commented on the word corpuscle
Moreover, the Moon ---
by Mina Loy
Face of the skies
preside
over our wonder.
Fluorescent
truant of heaven
draw us under.
Silver, circular corpse
your decease
infects us with unendurable ease,
touching nerve-terminals
to thermal icicles
Coercive as coma, frail as bloom
innuendoes of your inverse dawn
suffuse the self;
our every corpuscle become an elf.
December 28, 2006