Word.ws English Dictionary

amalthea

Syllables: A·mal·the·a

amalthea noun: an aggregation of dry fruits within a calyx which does not become fleshy, as in Alchemilla or Sanguisorba.

Noun

amalthea

  1. (obsolete) An aggregation of dry fruits within a calyx which does not become fleshy, as in Alchemilla or Sanguisorba.
    • The amalthea cut transversely; calyx five-toothed, echinated; seeds three, ovate, not fleshy, slightly compressed, pointed at top, blunt at bottom.1821, Samuel Frederick Gray, A natural arrangement of British plants, page 264

Proper noun capitalized: Amalthea

Amalthea

  1. (Greek) The most frequently mentioned foster mother of Zeus, sometimes represented as the goat who suckled the infant-god in a mountain cave, sometimes as a goat-tending nymph.
  2. The third most distant moon of Jupiter.

Forms of amalthea

alternative formAmaltheia

Origin of amalthea

From Ancient Greek Ἀμάλθεια (Amáltheia).

Words formed from amalthea

Questions about amalthea

What does amalthea mean?
Amalthea means an aggregation of dry fruits within a calyx which does not become fleshy, as in Alchemilla or Sanguisorba.
What part of speech is amalthea?
Amalthea can be a noun or a proper noun.

Words near amalthea in the dictionary

  1. Amalrician
  2. Amalricianism
  3. Amalricians
  4. Amals
  5. amaltas
  6. amalthea
  7. Amalthea's horn
  8. Amalthean
  9. Amaltheans
  10. Amaltheia
  11. Amaltheian

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: amalthea (page history and authors); Amalthea (page history and authors). Text available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 license. Word.ws reformatted the entry and added links. Wiktionary data of 2026-09-02.

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Pronunciation audio from Wikimedia Commons, each file under its own free license: LL-Q1860 (eng)-Sumxr-Amalthea.wav.

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