echinus
Americannoun
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any sea urchin of the genus Echinus.
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Architecture.
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an ovolo molding, especially one having an outline with several radii or one carved with an egg-and-dart pattern.
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the prominent circular molding supporting the abacus of a Doric or Tuscan capital.
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Also called cymatium. the circular molding, usually carved with an egg-and-dart pattern, forming part of an Ionic capital between the volutes and under the balteus.
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noun
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architect an ovolo moulding between the shaft and the abacus of a Doric column
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any of the sea urchins of the genus Echinus, such as E. esculentus ( edible sea urchin ) of the Mediterranean
Other Word Forms
Noun Inflected Forms
Etymology
Origin of echinus
1325–75; Middle English < Latin < Greek echînos hedgehog, sea urchin
Vocabulary lists containing echinus
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:
Others have acquired hard or armed shells, as the tortoise and the echinus marinus.
From Zoonomia, Vol. I Or, the Laws of Organic Life by Darwin, Erasmus
Yet the echinus can have, at the best, none but the most distant genetic relationship with the Polyzoa.
From On the Genesis of Species by Mivart, St. George
If I was to bend round the rays of the starfish and fill up the interior, I could produce an animal very like the echinus.
From Ernest Bracebridge School Days by Thomas, William I.
Above the echinus, which is circular, like the shaft, comes the highest member—the abacus, a square stout slab of marble, which completes the capital of the column.
From Architecture Classic and Early Christian by Smith, T. Roger (Thomas Roger)
Some have only the Latin plural, which usually changes us to i; as, alumnus, alumni; androgynus, androgyni; calculus, calculi; dracunculus, dracunculi; echinus, echini; magus, magi.
From The Grammar of English Grammars by Brown, Goold
Mr. John Beaumont, Junr., of Somersetshire, a great naturalist, tells me that some-where by Chilmarke lies in the chalke a bed of stones called "echini marini".
From The Natural History of Wiltshire by Aubrey, John
Among the molluscs and zoophytes, I found in the meshes of the net several species of alcyonarians, echini, hammers, spurs, dials, cerites, and hyalleae.
From Twenty Thousand Leagues under the Sea by Verne, Jules
“See, the whole beach is covered with beautiful shells, and there may be sea anemones and echini, and star-fish, and all sorts of marine creatures.”
From Dick Cheveley His Adventures and Misadventures by Groome, William H. C.
In the same stone the claws of crabs, fragments of echini, and other signs of a neighbouring beach, are observed.
From The Student's Elements of Geology by Lyell, Charles, Sir
Some have only the Latin plural, which usually changes us to i; as, alumnus, alumni; androgynus, androgyni; calculus, calculi; dracunculus, dracunculi; echinus, echini; magus, magi.
From The Grammar of English Grammars by Brown, Goold
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.
