Definitions
from The Century Dictionary.
- noun plural The last days of the Saturnalia in Rome, under the empire, in which presents of figurines of wax or clay were made, especially to children and slaves.
- noun A genus of very important and widely spread fossil plants which occur in the (Carboniferous) coal-measures, and which are especially characteristic of the middle section of the series.
from the GNU version of the Collaborative International Dictionary of English.
- noun (Paleon.) A genus of fossil trees principally found in the coal formation; -- so named from the seallike leaf scars in vertical rows on the surface.
- noun plural (Rom. Antic.) Little images or figures of earthenware exposed for sale, or given as presents, on the last two days of the Saturnalia; hence, the last two, or the sixth and seventh, days of the Saturnalia.
from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License.
- noun Any of the
genus Sigillaria offossil trees principally found in thecoal formation, withseal -likeleaf scars invertical rows on the surface.
Etymologies
from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License
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Examples
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There were tall grasses, ferns, lycopods, besides sigillaria, asterophyllites, now scarce plants, but then the species might be counted by thousands.
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They were lowly shrubs of earth, here attaining gigantic size; lycopodiums, a hundred feet high; the huge sigillaria, found in our coal mines; tree ferns, as tall as our fir-trees in northern latitudes; lepidodendra, with cylindrical forked stems, terminated by long leaves, and bristling with rough hairs like those of the cactus.
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(Is there perchance a survival here of the _sigillaria_, the little clay dolls sold in Rome at the _Saturnalia_?)
Christmas in Ritual and Tradition, Christian and Pagan Clement A. Miles
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Sir Charles Lyell mentions an individual sigillaria 72 feet in length found at Newcastle, and a specimen taken from the Jarrow coal mine was more than 40 feet in length and 13 feet in diameter near the base.
Scientific American Supplement, No. 447, July 26, 1884 Various
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For the earthenware or pastry sigillaria then sold all over Rome, see Macrobius; s.
The Catholic Encyclopedia, Volume 5: Diocese-Fathers of Mercy 1840-1916 1913
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I have many times used this in illustration of the hollow sigillaria trees of the coal, for in these, also, the bark was the most imperishable part.
Documenting the American South: The Southern Experience in 19-th Century America 1903
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They were lowly shrubs of earth, here attaining gigantic size; lycopodiums, a hundred feet high; the huge sigillaria, found in our coal mines; tree ferns, as tall as our fir-trees in northern latitudes; lepidodendra, with cylindrical forked stems, terminated by long leaves, and bristling with rough hairs like those of the cactus.
A Journey to the Interior of the Earth Jules Verne 1866
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There were tall grasses, ferns, lycopods, besides sigillaria, asterophyllites, now scarce plants, but then the species might be counted by thousands.
A Journey to the Interior of the Earth Jules Verne 1866
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In no other age did the world ever witness such a flora; the youth of the earth was peculiarly a green and umbrageous youth — a youth of dusk and tangled forests, of huge pines and stately araucarians, of the reed-like calamite, the tall tree-fern, the sculptured sigillaria, and the hirsute lepidodendrons.
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He may notice, however, in the fifth and sixth wall cases, fossil specimens of extinct plants, including the sigillaria, which, when living, is supposed to have attained often to the height of seventy feet.
How to See the British Museum in Four Visits W. Blanchard Jerrold 1855
ruzuzu commented on the word sigillaria
"The last days of the Saturnalia in Rome, under the empire, in which presents of figurines of wax or clay were made, especially to children and slaves."
- The Century Dictionary
August 4, 2010