fibril
Americannoun
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a small or fine fiber or filament.
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Botany. any of the delicate hairs on the young roots of some plants.
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Cell Biology. any threadlike structure or filament.
noun
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a small fibre or part of a fibre
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biology a threadlike structure, such as a root hair or a thread of muscle tissue
Other Word Forms
- fibrilar adjective
- fibrillar adjective
- fibrilliform adjective
- fibrillose adjective
Etymology
Origin of fibril
1655–65; < New Latin fibrilla, equivalent to Latin fibr ( a ) fiber + -illa diminutive suffix
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.
From the rough region of where the brain stem meets the thalamus—the structure that relays sensory signals to the cerebral cortex—individual fibrils appear to explode outward.
From Scientific American
If the fibrils are cut, the cirri fall limp.
From Scientific American
“We couldn’t believe this when we first saw this. And we started giving it crazy names like campfires and dark fibrils and ghosts and whatever we saw.”
From New York Times
Rauch et al. also found that the loss of LRP1 only partially blocked the uptake of larger ‘fibril fragments’ of tau.
From Nature
Three decades ago, Hof explains, research in Alzheimer’s linked two key proteins with the terrible dissolution of selves: beta-amyloid, which formed plaques between neurons; and tau, which formed tangled fibrils within neurons.
From The New Yorker
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.
