divaricate
Americanverb (used without object)
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to spread apart; branch; diverge.
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Botany, Zoology. to branch at a wide angle.
adjective
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spread apart; widely divergent.
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Botany, Zoology. branching at a wide angle.
verb
adjective
Other Word Forms
Etymology
Origin of divaricate
1615–25; < Latin dīvāricātus (past participle of dīvāricāre ), equivalent to dī di- 2 + vāric- (base of vāricāre to straddle; see prevaricate) + -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.
See Examples For:
Stems or branches pinnate: pinnae or branches alternate, straight, divaricate.
The book fell upon her knees, and dreamily she watched the perspective open and divaricate.
From Parrot & Co. by Harold MacGrath
While they run on together, the closest translation may be considered as the best; but when they divaricate, each must take its natural course.
From Lives of the Poets, Volume 1 by Samuel Johnson
Stems are many, tufted, slender, creeping and rooting, or ascending and suberect, simple or branched, 6 to 20 inches long and leafy and leaves bifarious and divaricate.
From A Handbook of Some South Indian Grasses by K. Rangachari
Colour greyish brown; polypidom 4 to five inches high, much branched, branches irregular, divaricate, rising in great numbers almost immediately from the mass of radical fibres.
Tail four inches from the base, slightly divaricated, and of twelve feathers.
From Zoological Illustrations, Volume I or Original Figures and Descriptions of New, Rare, or Interesting Animals by William Swainson
The ventral spine is short and blunt, and is armed with short divaricated teeth, some of which are forked.
Cardinal teeth small, fragile, variable in number, and rarely divaricated.
From Zoological Illustrations, Volume I or Original Figures and Descriptions of New, Rare, or Interesting Animals by William Swainson
The talk itself was far more desultory, and in consequence of questions, objections, and explanations, divaricated much from the comparatively direct line I have endeavoured to give it here.
From Wilfrid Cumbermede by George MacDonald
Tail divaricated and black; some of the lateral feathers faintly margined with orange.
From Zoological Illustrations, Volume I or Original Figures and Descriptions of New, Rare, or Interesting Animals by William Swainson
Very much branched, tan-colored, then ochraceous; trunk slender, villous, rooting; branches flexuous, having many divisions, branches of the same color, divaricating, fragile.
From The Mushroom, Edible and Otherwise Its Habitat and its Time of Growth by Miron Elisha Hard
I would like in a parenthetical section to expand and render rather more concrete this idea of the species as one divaricating flow of blood, by an appeal to its arithmetical aspect.
From First and Last Things by H. G. (Herbert George) Wells
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