acicular

Adjective

acicular (not comparable)

1. Needle-shaped; slender like a needle or bristle.
   • Near-synonyms: needlelike, pinlike
   • Sometimes these networks have an acicular or crystalline appearance, and may grow visibly, sometimes with sudden jerks, “like frost on a windowpane,” or “primitive plants.”1992, Oliver Sacks, Migraine, Berkeley: University of California Press, revised and expanded edition, Part 5, Chapter 17, p. 279

   Synonyms:

   needlelike, pinlike

2. Having sharp points like needles.
3. Of a leaf, slender and pointed, needle-like.
   • the acicular foliage of coniferous trees
   • […] though fond of foliage, their trees always had a tendency to congeal into little acicular thorn-hedges, and never tossed free.1860, John Ruskin, chapter 3, in Modern Painters […], volume V, London: Smith, Elder and Co., […], →OCLC, part VIII (Of Ideas of Relation:—I. Of Invention Formal.), page 189