Word.ws English Dictionary

spicula

spicula is the plural of spiculum.

Noun

spicula (plural spiculas or spiculae)

  1. A little spike; a spikelet or spiculum.
    • He concludes this Diſſertation, by endeavouring to explain the Manner of its [olive oil's] operating, which he attributes to its fat inviſcating Nature, whereby it ſheathes the Spicula of the Poiſon.1738 December, C. Mortimer, “VI. An Abstract by C. Mortimer, M.D. Secr[etary of the] R[oyal] S[ociety] of an Inaugural Dissertation Published at Wittemberg 1736. by Dr. Abraham Vater, F.R.S....
    • And yet Thoreau camps down by Walden Pond and shows us that absolutely nothing in Nature has ever yet been described,--not a bird nor a berry of the woods, nor a drop of water, nor a spicula of ice, nor summer, nor winter, nor sun, nor star.1861, Various, Atlantic Monthly, Volume 8, No. 47, September, 1861
  2. A pointed fleshy appendage.
    • Nature 'publishes itself in creatures, reaching from particles and spicula, through transformation on transformation to the highest symmetries.1904, John Morley, Critical Miscellanies, Vol. 1, Essay 5, Emerson

Meaning of spiculum

Noun

spiculum (plural spicula)

  1. A thrusting javelin used by Romans that replaced the pilum in the late 3rd century.
  2. A sharp, pointed crystal, especially of ice.
    Synonyms:
    spicula
  3. A sharp, needle-like structure, especially those making up the skeleton of a sponge.
  4. A small radial emission of gas seen in the chromosphere and corona of the sun.
    Synonyms:
    spicule

Forms of spicula

pluralspiculas
pluralspiculae

Origin of spicula

Borrowed from Latin spīcula.

Words that rhyme with spicula

Questions about spicula

What does spicula mean?
Spicula means a little spike; a spikelet or spiculum.
What is spicula the plural of?
Spicula is the plural of spiculum.
What part of speech is spicula?
Spicula is a noun.
What is the plural of spicula?
The plural of spicula is spiculas.

Words near spicula in the dictionary

  1. spicness
  2. spicose
  3. spicous
  4. spics
  5. spicspeak
  6. spicula
  7. spiculae
  8. spicular
  9. spicularite
  10. spicularitic
  11. spiculas

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: spicula (page history and authors); spiculum (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: “spicula.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/spicula. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.