Definitions

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

  • adjective Having the form of or resembling a thread or filament.

from The Century Dictionary.

  • noun In surgery, a very slender hair-like bougie.
  • Like a filum in form; thready; filamentous; filaceous.
  • Pertaining to or having the characters of the Filiformia.

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

  • adjective Having the shape of a thread or filament; See Illust. of antennæ.

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

  • adjective Shaped like or resembling a thread or filament; filamentous.
  • adjective Having all component parts or segments cylindrical and more or less uniform in size.

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

  • adjective thin in diameter; resembling a thread

Etymologies

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

[Latin fīlum, thread; see gwhī- in Indo-European roots + –form.]

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License

Latin filum ("thread") + -form

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Examples

  • There are at least five known types of warts that are caused by a number of HPV strains: common warts (often found on the hands and scalp); filiform warts (common in those who are overweight and often appear on the face and armpits); periungual warts (usually appearing around the fingernails); flat warts (smaller than the common warts and appear in clusters on the hands and legs); and plantar warts.

    Resolving Moles and Warts Permanently the Natural Way 2007

  • Amongst the bushes here, a HAKEA, with simple filiform mucronulate leaves without flower, occurred, loaded with oblong hard galls resembling dry plums.

    Journal of an Expedition into the Interior of Tropical Australia 2003

  • Constantine, I discovered on the edges of the pigmented spherical bodies in the blood of a patient suffering from malaria, filiform elements resembling flagellae which were moving very rapidly, displacing the neighbouring red cells.

    Alphonse Laveran - Nobel Lecture 1967

  • The inflorescence is a spike-like panicle, with very short filiform inarticulate branches and rachises.

    A Handbook of Some South Indian Grasses K. Rangachari

  • The _leaf-blade_ is linear, narrow, sometimes even filiform, acuminate slightly cordate at the base, scabrid throughout with a few scattered long bulbous-based hairs near the base to a distance of less than 1/2 inch about it and varies from 2 to 4 inches in length.

    A Handbook of Some South Indian Grasses K. Rangachari

  • A living, organized ferment, of the vibrionic type, filiform, with tortuous motions, and often of immense length, forms spontaneously by the development of some germs derived in some way from the inevitable particles of dust floating in the air or resting on the surface of the vessels or material which we employ.

    The Harvard Classics Volume 38 Scientific Papers (Physiology, Medicine, Surgery, Geology) Various

  • These, together with the few flowers that linger, backed up, as they are, with a dense bed of foliage, interlaced with its numerous filiform stems, present this subject in its most interesting and, perhaps, its prettiest form.

    Hardy Perennials and Old Fashioned Flowers Describing the Most Desirable Plants, for Borders, Rockeries, and Shrubberies. John Wood

  • The _inflorescence_ is a lax, narrow, subsecund panicle, varying in length from 3 to 12 inches, and with a slender glabrous peduncle; the main rachis is filiform and glabrous; branches are either solitary or binate, unequal; branched either from the middle or the base; _pedicels_ are short and capillary.

    A Handbook of Some South Indian Grasses K. Rangachari

  • It differs from _G. nutans_ in being an annual and in having filiform leaves, bicuspidate third glume which is scabrid all over the back and a fourth glume distinctly tricuspidate at the apex.

    A Handbook of Some South Indian Grasses K. Rangachari

  • The _panicle_ is oblong to pyramidal, flaccid, open or contracted erect or inclined, 2 to 8 inches; rachis is hairy or glabrous; branches are very fine filiform or capillary, more or less whorled, lower six inches long; branchlets are still finer and capillary.

    A Handbook of Some South Indian Grasses K. Rangachari

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