caducous
Americanadjective
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Botany. dropping off very early, as leaves.
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Zoology. subject to shedding.
adjective
Etymology
Origin of caducous
First recorded in 1675–85 for obsolete sense; 1805–10 for current senses; from Latin cadūcus “unsteady, perishable,” equivalent to cad(ere) “to fall” + -ūcus adjective suffix ( see -ous)
Example Sentences
Examples are provided to illustrate real-world usage of words in context. Any opinions expressed do not reflect the views of Dictionary.com.
They invariably come laden with words that seem meant to prove his vocabulary is bigger than yours: flocculent, crapulent, caducous, anaglypta, mephitic, velutinous.
From New York Times • Oct. 1, 2020
He is exceedingly well formed and graceful; his horns are not so large as those of the stag, but, like his, they are annually caducous, falling off in the winter and returning in the spring.
From The Hunters' Feast Conversations Around the Camp Fire by Reid, Mayne
The first and the second glumes are unequal, persistent or separately caducous.
From A Handbook of Some South Indian Grasses by Rangachari, K.
Leaves alternate, compound, digitate, caducous; leaflets 5–7 with long common petiole.
From The Medicinal Plants of the Philippines by Thomas, Jerome Beers
Embryo straight.—Trees, with rounded heart-shaped simple leaves, caducous stipules, and red-purple flowers in umbel-like clusters along the branches of the last or preceding years, appearing before the leaves, acid to the taste.
From The Manual of the Botany of the Northern United States Including the District East of the Mississippi and North of North Carolina and Tennessee by Gray, Asa
Definitions and idiom definitions from Dictionary.com Unabridged, based on the Random House Unabridged Dictionary, © Random House, Inc. 2023
Idioms from The American Heritage® Idioms Dictionary copyright © 2002, 2001, 1995 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company.
