Definitions

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

  • noun The skull.
  • noun The portion of the skull enclosing the brain; the braincase.

from The Century Dictionary.

  • noun The skull of a human being, or, as now-used, of any animal; the bones of the head, collectively.
  • noun More exactly, the brain-box; the bony case of the encephalon, as distinguished from those bones of the skull which support the face and jaws. See cranial.
  • noun In entomology, the integument of an insect's head excluding the antennæ, eyes, and oral apparatus, and including the epicranium, gula, and occiput.

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

  • noun The skull of an animal; especially, that part of the skull, either cartilaginous or bony, which immediately incloses the brain; the brain case or brainpan. See skull.

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

  • noun The skull of a vertebrate.
  • noun That part of the skull enclosing the brain, the braincase.

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

  • noun the part of the skull that encloses the brain

Etymologies

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

[Middle English craneum, from Medieval Latin crānium, from Greek krānion; see ker- in Indo-European roots.]

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License

From Medieval Latin crānium ("skull"), from Ancient Greek κρανίον (kranion, "skull").

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