Word.ws English Dictionary

tunicle

/ˈtjuːnɪkəl/

tunicle noun: a small tunic.

Noun

tunicle (plural tunicles)

  1. (obsolete) A small tunic.
  2. A vestment worn by a subdeacon at celebrations of the Eucharist.
    • In illustrating his views on the Popish tendency of these rubrics, the rev. gentleman particularly referred to the use of the alb, and cope, and tunicle, by the clergy in the discharge of their official duties.1845 January 11, The Times, p.5 col. D
    • He longed for the minor sacred offices, to be vested with the tunicle of subdeacon at high mass […].1916, James Joyce, chapter IV, in A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man, New York, N.Y.: B[enjamin] W. Huebsch, →OCLC
  3. A tunica; a membrane or membranous sheath of skin.

Forms of tunicle

pluraltunicles

Origin of tunicle

Latin tunicula, diminutive of tunica (“tunic”).

Questions about tunicle

What does tunicle mean?
Tunicle means a small tunic.
What part of speech is tunicle?
Tunicle is a noun.
How do you pronounce tunicle?
Tunicle is pronounced /ˈtjuːnɪkəl/.
What is the plural of tunicle?
The plural of tunicle is tunicles.

Words near tunicle in the dictionary

  1. tunicin
  2. tunicins
  3. tunick
  4. tunicked
  5. tunicks
  6. tunicle
  7. tunicles
  8. tunicless
  9. tuniclike
  10. tunics
  11. tunicwise

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: tunicle (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: “tunicle.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/tunicle. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.