Word.ws English Dictionary

punctum saliens

punctum saliens noun: the primordial heart in an embryo, appearing as a throbbing point.

Noun

punctum saliens (uncountable)

  1. (historical) The primordial heart in an embryo, appearing as a throbbing point.
    • The rudiments of the brain, eyes, punctum saliens, spinal cord, six vertebrae, shades of ribs, a dark knob at the cephalic extremity of spine, and an oval expansion at the caudal extremity.1846, The Lancet London: A Journal of British and Foreign Medicine, Surgery, Obstetrics, Physiology, Chemistry, Pharmacology, Public Health and News, page 382
  2. (figuratively) Starting point, source; gist.
    • In him we discover the punctum saliens of a principle which is the master spirit of animal and vegetable motion, the ruling power of chemical science, the governing influence of atmospheric composition, the presiding genius of respiration, […]1830, The American Journal of the Medical Sciences, page 67
    Synonyms:
    bowels, sum, brass tacks, core, crux, essence, gist, drift, guts, gravamen

Synonyms of punctum saliens

19 more synonymsFewer synonyms

Origin of punctum saliens

Borrowed from Latin punctum saliēns (“leaping point”), attributed to Volcher Coiter or Ulysses Aldrovandi, after a Latin translation of Aristotle's History of Animals (book 6, part 3).

Questions about punctum saliens

What does punctum saliens mean?
Punctum saliens means the primordial heart in an embryo, appearing as a throbbing point.
What part of speech is punctum saliens?
Punctum saliens is a noun.

Words near punctum saliens in the dictionary

  1. punctum
  2. punctum caecum
  3. punctum delens
  4. punctum proximum
  5. punctum remotum
  6. punctum saliens
  7. punctum stans
  8. punctum vasculosum
  9. punctum vegetationis
  10. punctums
  11. puncturable

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: punctum saliens (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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