gypsobelum
gypsobelum noun: a love dart.
Noun
gypsobelum
- A love dart
- On the one hand, there’s the slug, who comes equipped with a gypsobelum, or “love dart,” that it fires, like a “hormone-slick porcupine quill to subdue the object of its desire.”2015 October 9, Emily Eakin, “Bonnie Jo Campbell’s ‘Mothers, Tell Your Daughters’”, in New York Times
Origin of gypsobelum
Coined by British malacologist John W. Taylor ca. 1900, from γύψος (gúpsos, “lime”) + βέλος (bélos, “dart”).
Questions about gypsobelum
- What does gypsobelum mean?
- Gypsobelum means a love dart.
- What part of speech is gypsobelum?
- Gypsobelum is a noun.
Words near gypsobelum in the dictionary
Source and license
Adapted from Wiktionary: gypsobelum (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: “gypsobelum.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/gypsobelum. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.