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calamus

calamus noun: sweet flag (Acorus calamus).

calamus: sweet flag (Acorus calamus)
Image: J.F. Gaffard, Autoreille, France, CC BY-SA 3.0, via Wikimedia Commons

Noun

calamus (usually uncountable, plural calamuses or calami)

  1. (usually) Sweet flag (Acorus calamus).
    • A garden inclosed is my sister, my spouse; a spring shut up, a fountain sealed. Thy plants are an orchard of pomegranates, with pleasant fruits; camphire, with spikenard, Spikenard and saffron; calamus and cinnamon, with all trees of frankincense; myrrh and aloes, with all the chief spices1611, The Holy Bible, […] (King James Version), London: […] Robert Barker, […], →OCLC, Song of Solomon 4:12–14
  2. (usually) A quill; the hard, horny, hollow, and more or less transparent part of the stem or scape of a feather.
    • Thus, the four distinct feather parts that have been compared as to amino acid content to note whether or not the composition is uniform are rachis, barbs, calamus and medulla.1956, Advisory Board on Quartermaster Research and Development, The Utilization of Chicken Feathers as Filling Materials, page 9
    • In follicles late in feather growth, after rupture of the feather sheath, this canal contained the upper part of the calamus.1969, RIC Spearman, “The epidermis and feather follicles of the king penguin (Aptenodytes patagonica) (aves)”, in Zeitschrift für Morphologie der Tiere
  3. (usually) A fish of genus Calamus in family Sparidae; certain porgies.
  4. (usually) A palm in genus Calamus, of rattan palms.
  5. (usually) A fistular stem without an articulation.
  6. (historical, usually) Synonym of fistula (“tube for sucking Eucharist wine”).
    Synonyms:
    fistula

Proper noun capitalized: Calamus

Calamus

  1. A small town in Clinton County, Iowa, United States, named after a creek.
  2. A town in Dodge County, Wisconsin, United States.

calamus meaning in Tamil

calamus in Tamil

இறக்கைக்கீழ்த்தண்டு, நறுமணநீர்ச் செடி வகை, நாணால் செய்த பண்டை எழுதுகோல், பிரம்பு தரும் பனை வகை, இறகு, இறகுக் காம்பு

Synonyms of calamus

Forms of calamus

pluralcalamuses
pluralcalami

Origin of calamus

Learned borrowing from Latin calamus (“reed, cane”). Doublet of culm, haulm, helm (Etymology 4, stalk), qalam, and shawm.

Questions about calamus

What does calamus mean?
Calamus means sweet flag (Acorus calamus).
What is calamus in Tamil?
Calamus in Tamil is இறக்கைக்கீழ்த்தண்டு, நறுமணநீர்ச் செடி வகை, நாணால் செய்த பண்டை எழுதுகோல். See Calamus meaning in Tamil.
What part of speech is calamus?
Calamus can be a noun or a proper noun.
What is the plural of calamus?
The plural of calamus is calamuses.

Words near calamus in the dictionary

  1. calamondin
  2. calamondins
  3. calamosaur
  4. calamosaurs
  5. Calampinay
  6. calamus
  7. calamuses
  8. Calamy
  9. Caland system
  10. calander
  11. calanders

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: calamus (page history and authors); Calamus (page history and authors); calamus (Tamil Wiktionary) (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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Cite this entry: “calamus.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/calamus. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.