Word.ws English Dictionary

pectinal

pectinal adjective: resembling a comb.

Adjective

pectinal (comparative more pectinal, superlative most pectinal)

  1. (usually) resembling a comb.
    • pectinal ossicles
    • pectinal teeth

Noun

pectinal (plural pectinals)

  1. A fish whose bones resemble the teeth of a comb.
    • Now although Galen in this place makes instance but in one, yet there are other fishes, whose eies regard the heavens, as Plane, and cartilagineous fishes, as pectinals, or such as have their bones made laterally like a comb; for when they apply themselves to sleep or rest upon the white side...1650, Sir Thomas Browne, Pseudodoxia Epidemica

Forms of pectinal

Adjective
comparativemore pectinal
superlativemost pectinal
Noun
pluralpectinals

Origin of pectinal

Latin pecten (“comb”). See pectinate. By surface analysis, Latin pectin- (“comb, scallop”) + -al.

Questions about pectinal

What does pectinal mean?
Pectinal means resembling a comb.
What part of speech is pectinal?
Pectinal can be an adjective or a noun.

Words near pectinal in the dictionary

  1. pectiform
  2. pectin
  3. pectinacean
  4. pectinaceans
  5. pectinaceous
  6. pectinal
  7. pectinals
  8. pectinariid
  9. pectinariids
  10. pectinase
  11. pectinases

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: pectinal (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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