Definitions

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

  • noun Any of various marine protozoans of the order (or phylum) Radiolaria, having rigid siliceous skeletons and spicules.

from The Century Dictionary.

  • Of or pertaining to the Radiolaria; containing or consisting of radiolarians.
  • noun Any member of the Radiolaria.

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

  • adjective (Zoöl.) Of or pertaining to the Radiolaria.

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

  • noun Any of many marine amoeboid protozoa, of subclass Radiolaria, having filamentous pseudopodia; they have intricate silica skeletons

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

  • noun protozoa with amoeba-like bodies and radiating filamentous pseudopods

Etymologies

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

[From New Latin Radiolāria, order name, from Late Latin radiolus, diminutive of Latin radius, ray.]

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License

From New Latin radiolaria +‎ -an

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Examples

  • The stone type quarried is unique to the Sarikaya quarry, as it can be microscopically classified as radiolarian mudstone.

    Interactive Dig Sagalassos - Geological Survey Report 1 2003

  • The key to Haeckel's vision was a tiny undersea organism called the radiolarian, one of the earliest forms of life.

    Needcoffee.com 2008

  • OTOH, how can you resist a guy who uses the word radiolarian in his lyrics?)

    your fragile aftershot shock truepenny 2009

  • Bird's lyrics often feature archaic language - words such as radiolarian, plecostomus, dermestids, coprophagia - which he chooses mainly for their sound, but not at the expense of their meaning.

    NPR Topics: News 2010

  • Bird's lyrics often feature archaic language - words such as radiolarian, plecostomus, dermestids, coprophagia - which he chooses mainly for their sound, but not at the expense of their meaning.

    NPR Topics: News 2010

  • Bird's lyrics often feature archaic language - words such as radiolarian, plecostomus, dermestids, coprophagia - which he chooses mainly for their sound, but not at the expense of their meaning.

    NPR Topics: News 2010

  • Similarly, among protists, a radiolarian may capture and ingest, more or less indifferently, a bacterium, an autotrophic flagellate, a herbivorous oligotrich ciliate, or another radiolarian (Fig 2E).

    Marine microbes 2009

  • (Soundbite of music) Mr. BIRD: (Singing) (Unintelligible) radiolarian … BLOCK: What's a radiolarian?

    Andrew Bird: Words As Instruments 2009

  • Here are atoms of silica, once imprisoned in a layer of flint in the subterranean darkness; later, within the fragile shell of a diatom, tossed by waves and warmed by the sun; and again entering into the exquisite structure of a radiolarian shell, that miracle of ephemeral beauty that might be the work of a fairy glass-blower with a snowflake as his pattern.

    Undersea (historical) Rachel Louise Carson 2007

  • On the table was a glass model that Elizabeth assumed represented some intricate protist organism such as a marine radiolarian.

    The Golden Torc May, Julian, 1931- 1981

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