Definitions
from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 5th Edition.
- noun A small cup-shaped structure or organ, such as the cup at the base of an acorn or one of the suckers on the feet of certain flies.
from The Century Dictionary.
- noun A small cup-shaped depression, as in rock.
- noun In botany: A form of involucre, occurring in the oak, beech, chestnut, and hazel, consisting of bracts which in fruit cohere into a kind of cup. In fungi, a receptacle shaped like the cup of an acorn, as in
Peziza . - noun In entomology, a little cup-shaped organ; specifically, one of the sucking-disks on the lower surface of the tarsi of certain aquatic beetles.
- noun Also
cupula .
from the GNU version of the Collaborative International Dictionary of English.
- noun (Bot.) A cuplet or little cup, as of the acorn; the husk or bur of the filbert, chestnut, etc.
- noun (Zoöl.) A sucker or acetabulum.
from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License.
- noun Any small structure shaped like a
cup , such as at the base of anacorn , or thesucker on the feet of someflies
from WordNet 3.0 Copyright 2006 by Princeton University. All rights reserved.
- noun cup-shaped structure of hardened bracts at the base of an acorn
- noun a sucker on the feet of certain flies
Etymologies
from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 4th Edition
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Examples
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6D: Nut with a cupule (ACORN) - remembered this feature from some earlier discussion we had about the word "cupule"
Rex Parker Does the NYT Crossword Puzzle Rex Parker 2010
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A common form of prehistoric rock-art here in California is the cupule.
Cupules and Geophagy 2005
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Each girl ground a cupule at the completion of the rite and families had their own special rock faces where this was done.
Cupules and Geophagy 2005
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Each girl ground a cupule at the completion of the rite and families had their own special rock faces where this was done.
Archive 2005-10-01 2005
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A common form of prehistoric rock-art here in California is the cupule.
Archive 2005-10-01 2005
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Cohesion of the bracts by their edges, so as to form a tubular involucre, or by their surfaces, so as to form a cupule, is not of uncommon occurrence, under natural conditions, and may be met with in plants which ordinarily do not exhibit this appearance.
Vegetable Teratology An Account of the Principal Deviations from the Usual Construction of Plants Maxwell T. Masters
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PS (2008) Molecular phylogenetics and cupule evolution in Fagaceae as inferred from nuclear CRABS CLAW sequences.
PLoS ONE Alerts: New Articles Duncan N. L. Menge et al. 2010
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[Dr. Johnson again.] acorn ... the nut of the oak usu. seated in or surrounded by a hard woody cupule of indurated bracts.
qms commented on the word cupule
The hygiene of Poxie Dalrymple
Was brutal, disgusting, and simple.
She turned crops of pustules
To a moonscape of cupules
By squeezing and popping each pimple.
February 21, 2016