adjective
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like wool; fleecy
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chem aggregated in woolly cloudlike masses
a flocculent precipitate
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biology covered with tufts or flakes of a waxy or wool-like substance
Other Word Forms
Etymology
Origin of flocculent
Explanation
If something's puffy or has tufts, you can describe it as flocculent. Sheep are flocculent before they're sheared, and much less flocculent afterward. The unusual adjective flocculent basically means "fluffy," although it's specific to the way wool is fluffy — in tufts. Your carefully styled hair might be flocculent after a drive in a convertible, for example. The root is the Latin word floccus, which means "lock of hair" or "tuft of wool."
Vocabulary lists containing flocculent
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
“A vast, flocculent cloud darkened and devitalized the city, mimicking the family mood like weather does in memories.”
From New York Times • Apr. 11, 2019
The wind, hilarious, loud, piping gayly a tuneful stave, shepherded the clouds in the fair fields of the high sky, driving the flocculent white masses here and there as listed a changing will.
From The Mystery of Witch-Face Mountain and Other Stories by Murfree, Mary Noailles
The felspar crystals are lighter and more translucent than the matrix, but are of much the same character, having a granulated or flocculent appearance, somewhat like that of the decomposed felspars in diabase.
From Etna A History of the Mountain and of its Eruptions by Rodwell, G. F.
He also obtained a flocculent precipitate which later became granular and showed under the microscope forms like the starfish, and discs with undulated borders.
From The Mechanism of Life by Leduc, Stéphane
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.
