circinate
Americanadjective
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made round; ring-shaped.
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Botany, Mycology. rolled up on the axis at the apex, as a leaf or fruiting body.
adjective
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botany (of part of a plant, such as a young fern) coiled so that the tip is at the centre
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anatomy resembling a ring or a circle
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Rolled up in the form of a coil with the tip in the center, as an unexpanded fern frond.
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See more at vernation
Other Word Forms
Derived Forms
Etymology
Origin of circinate
1820–30; < Latin circinātus (past participle of circināre to make round), equivalent to circin ( us ) pair of compasses (akin to circus ) + -ātus -ate 1
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.
These are the buds readying for the circinate vernation that will slowly, like a graceful dancer, unfurl fiddleheads into this year’s new fronds.
From Seattle Times • Jan. 25, 2022
Several closely-lying lesions may coalesce and a large, irregular patch be formed; some of the patches, also, may be more or less circinate, the central portion having, in a measure or completely, disappeared.
From Essentials of Diseases of the Skin Including the Syphilodermata Arranged in the Form of Questions and Answers Prepared Especially for Students of Medicine by Stelwagon, Henry Weightman
P. campan.-convex, lubricous, smoky-ochre, edge revolute downy and whitish; g. sinuate, crowded, reddish, edge white, crenulate; s. slender, whitish, subbulbous, with reflexed circinate fibrils; sp. 11-12 long. nauseosum, Cke.
From European Fungus Flora: Agaricaceae by Massee, George
Others are very curious, being stellate in Triposporium, circinate in Helicoma and Helicocoryne, angular in Gonatosporium, and ciliate in Menispora ciliata.
From Fungi: Their Nature and Uses by Cooke, M. C. (Mordecai Cubitt)
Seeds numerous, anatropous, with a short and minute embryo at the base of the albumen.—Leaves circinate in the bud, i.e., rolled up from the apex to the base as in Ferns.
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.
