Definitions

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

  • adjective Having five similar parts.
  • adjective Having flower parts, such as petals, sepals, and stamens, in sets of five.

from The Century Dictionary.

  • Five-parted; five-jointed; composed or consisting of five parts or five sets of similar parts.

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

  • adjective (Biol.) Divided into, or consisting of, five parts; also, arranged in sets, with five parts in each set, as a flower with five sepals, five petals, five, or twice five, stamens, and five pistils.
  • adjective (Zoöl.) Belonging to the Pentamera.

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

  • adjective botany In five parts; made up of five parts.

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

  • adjective divided into five parts; specifically, having each floral whorl consist of five (or a multiple of five) members

Etymologies

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License

From penta- + -merous.

Support

Help support Wordnik (and make this page ad-free) by adopting the word pentamerous.

Examples

  • Hydradephaga; - ous: applied to aquatic, predatory pentamerous beetles with filiform antennae: see adephagous.

    Explanation of Terms Used in Entomology John. B. Smith

  • Thus, in both _Lilium lancifolium_ and _L. auratum_ the writer has frequently met with pentamerous flowers.

    Vegetable Teratology An Account of the Principal Deviations from the Usual Construction of Plants Maxwell T. Masters

  • Adephagous: belonging to the Adephaga: pentamerous, predatory, terrestrial beetles with filiform antennae and predatory habits: see hydradephagous.

    Explanation of Terms Used in Entomology John. B. Smith

  • In the British Adoxa the uppermost flower generally has two calyx-lobes with the other organs tetramerous, whilst the surrounding flowers generally have three calyx-lobes with the other organs pentamerous.

    VII. Miscellaneous Objections to the Theory of Natural Selection 1909

  • It is so common to observe on the same plant, flowers indifferently tetramerous, pentamerous, &c., that I need not give examples; but as numerical variations are comparatively rare when the parts are few, I may mention that, according to De Candolle, the flowers of Papaver bracteatum offer either two sepals with four petals (which is the common type with poppies), or three sepals with six petals.

    VII. Miscellaneous Objections to the Theory of Natural Selection 1909

  • This species resembles P. Sabiniana in the length of its seed-wing and in the color of its cone, but is distinct in the short triangular umbo, in its pentamerous leaf-fascicles and in the mottled dorsal surface of its nut.

    The Genus Pinus George Russell Shaw 1892

  • To take an example, the group Pseudostrobus, characterized by pentamerous leaf-fascicles, appears in many systems.

    The Genus Pinus George Russell Shaw 1892

  • So for a week he floated with the current of casual dissipation and then, caught for an hour by a refluent eddy of lonesomeness, -- four parts of the pentamerous clover-leaf were paired lovers, -- he penned a missive which might have changed much in his future career: He sent to Christian Schwan a formal proposal for the hand of

    The Life and Works of Friedrich Schiller Calvin Thomas 1886

  • -- Diagram showing the arrangement of parts in a complete, regular, pentamerous flower: _s_, sepals; _p_, petals; _st_, stamens; _o_, ovaries.]

    Vegetable Teratology An Account of the Principal Deviations from the Usual Construction of Plants Maxwell T. Masters

  • So for a week he floated with the current of casual dissipation and then, caught for an hour by a refluent eddy of lonesomeness, ” four parts of the pentamerous clover-leaf were paired lovers, ” he penned a missive which might have changed much in his future career: He sent to Christian Schwan a formal proposal for the hand of Margarete.

    The Life and Works of Friedrich Schiller Thomas, Calvin, 1854-1919 1901

Comments

Log in or sign up to get involved in the conversation. It's quick and easy.

  • Century Dictionary (1 definition)

    Five-parted; five-jointed; composed or consisting of five parts or five sets of similar parts. Specifically – In entomology: Five-jointed, as a beetle's tarsus.

    March 10, 2011