cycad

[ sahy-kad ]

noun

any gymnospermous plant of the order Cycadales, intermediate in appearance between ferns and the palms, many species having a thick, unbranched, columnar trunk bearing a crown of large, leathery, pinnate leaves.

Origin of cycad

1835–45; <New Latin Cycad- (stem of Cycas) genus name <Greek kýkas, misspelling of kóïkas, accusative plural of kóïx kind of palm

Other words from cycad

cy·cad·like, adjective

Words Nearby cycad

Dictionary.com Unabridged Based on the Random House Unabridged Dictionary, © Random House, Inc. 2023

How to use cycad in a sentence

Abundant now, as throughout the Mesozoic, were cycads — palm-like plants with seed-producing cones.
Explainer: The age of dinosaurs | Beth Geiger | December 3, 2021 | Science News For Students
Animals like dinosaurs and plants like cycads, says Ruffell, were “waiting in the wings” to seize their opportunity.
A volcano-induced rainy period made Earth’s climate dinosaur-friendly | Megan Sever | September 30, 2021 | Science News
Therapods had a varied diet, while herbivores chowed down on ferns, cycads, and conifers, to name some ancient plants that are still around today.
What would a dinosaur taste like? | John Kennedy | September 16, 2021 | Popular-Science
As dinosaurs lumbered through the humid cycad forests of ancient South America 180 million years ago, primeval lizards scurried, unnoticed, beneath their feet.
Why do snakes flick their tongues? | Purbita Saha | June 20, 2021 | Popular-Science
It was thickly covered with a fine cycad which grows amongst the rocks overhanging the sea.
Wanderings Among South Sea Savages And in Borneo and the Philippines | H. Wilfrid Walker

At Treasury Island I found a solitary cycad at a height of a thousand feet above the sea.
The Solomon Islands and Their Natives | H. B. (Henry Brougham) Guppy
Bowenia, an Australian cycad, is peculiar in having bi-pinnate fronds (fig. 5).
Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 12, Slice 7 | Various
Palms are so like cycads that we may regard them as the descendants of some cycad type.
The Elements of Geology | William Harmon Norton
Opposite me is a funny old cycad, not branched at all but bent.
A Journal from Japan | Marie Carmichael Stopes

British Dictionary definitions for cycad

cycad

/ (ˈsaɪkæd) /

noun

any tropical or subtropical gymnosperm plant of the phylum Cycadophyta, having an unbranched stem with fernlike leaves crowded at the top: See also sago palm (def. 2)

Origin of cycad

C19: from New Latin Cycas name of genus, from Greek kukas, scribe's error for koïkas, from koïx a kind of palm, probably of Egyptian origin

Derived forms of cycad

cycadaceous, adjective

Collins English Dictionary - Complete & Unabridged 2012 Digital Edition © William Collins Sons & Co. Ltd. 1979, 1986 © HarperCollins Publishers 1998, 2000, 2003, 2005, 2006, 2007, 2009, 2012

Scientific definitions for cycad

cycad

[ sī′kăd′ ]

Any of various evergreen plants that live in tropical and subtropical regions, have large feathery leaves, and resemble palm trees in that most leaves cluster around the top of the stem. Cycads are gymnosperms that bear conelike reproductive structures at the top of the stem, with male and female cones borne on different plants. Cycads were common in many parts of the Earth during the Jurassic Period and survive today in about 250 species. Sago palms are cycads.

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