Definitions

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

  • noun A covering or integument, especially.
  • noun The thin plate of bone that covers the middle ear.
  • noun The tough leathery forewing of certain insects.
  • noun The inner layer of a seed coat.

from The Century Dictionary.

  • noun In crinoids, same as disk, 5
  • noun A covering; a covering or protecting part or organ; a tectorium; an integument; a tegmentum.
  • noun In botany, the endopleura, or inner coat, of the seed. It is soft and delicate, and conforms to the shape of the nucleus. See seed, 1.
  • noun plural In ornithology, the tectrices or coverts of the wing or tail. See tectrices.
  • noun In anatomy, the roof of the tympanic cavity of the ear, especially in early stages of its formation: also distinguished as tegmen tympani.
  • noun The covering of the posterior wing of some insects; especially, the fore wing of any orthopterous insect, corresponding to the elytrum of a beetle or the hemielytrum of a bug.

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

  • noun A tegument or covering.
  • noun (Bot.) The inner layer of the coating of a seed, usually thin and delicate; the endopleura.
  • noun (Zoöl.) One of the elytra of an insect, especially of certain Orthoptera.
  • noun (Zoöl.) Same as Tectrices.

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

  • noun biology A covering or integument

Etymologies

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

[Latin tegimen, tegmen, covering, from tegere, to cover; see (s)teg- in Indo-European roots.]

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