testa

American  

[tes-tuh] / ˈtɛs tə /

noun

Botany.

• testae
  plural

1. the outer, usually hard, integument of a seed.

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testa British  

/ ˈtɛstə /

noun

1. a hard protective outer layer of the seeds of flowering plants; seed coat

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testa Scientific  

/ tĕs′tə /

• testae
  plural

1. See seed coat

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Other Word Forms

Noun Inflected Forms

• testae
  plural

Etymology

Origin of testa

First recorded in 1790–1800; from New Latin, Latin; see test ²

Example Sentences

See Examples For:

testa testae

Cure is a mecca for carnivores; the shareable salumi plate alone comes with no fewer than 17 types of cold meats, including lamb culatello, coppa di testa and duck rillettes.

From Washington Post ● Jul. 16, 2015

The testa is far better than it sounds--like a fatty but delicately flavored sausage, topped with a little vinegar salad for bite.

From Time Magazine Archive

Tak' dem to capo in testa for show extrra gooda faith in nama da Arma of Zhoostees.

From "Persons Unknown" by Virginia Tracy

The original of the passage above is as follows: “Deó grande nopillar fantacia; mondo cosi cosi; si estar escrito in testa andar andar; sino acá morir.”

From The Philippine Islands, 1493-1898 - Volume 40 of 55 1690-1691 Explorations by Early Navigators, Descriptions of the Islands and Their Peoples, Their History and Records of the Catholic Missions, as Related in Contemporaneous Books and Manuscripts, Showing the Political, Economic, Commercial and Religious Conditions of Those Islands from Their Earliest Relations with European Nations to the Close of the Nineteenth Century by Emma Helen Blair

These structural peculiarities of the testa in different plants have relation to the scattering of the seed and its germination upon a suitable nidus.

From Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 11, Slice 3 "Frost" to "Fyzabad" by Various

One point makes the above view more probable in Acropera than in other cases, viz. the presence of rudimentary placentae or testae, for I cannot hear that these have been observed in the male plants.

From More Letters of Charles Darwin — Volume 2 by Sir Francis Darwin

I have looked at the seeds; I never saw in the British orchids nearly so many empty testae; but this goes for nothing, as unnatural conditions would account for it.

From More Letters of Charles Darwin — Volume 2 by Sir Francis Darwin