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Animalcule   Listen
noun
Animalcule  n.  
1.
A small animal, as a fly, spider, etc. (Obs.)
2.
(Zool.) An animal, invisible, or nearly so, to the naked eye. See Infusoria. Note: Many of the so-called animalcules have been shown to be plants, having locomotive powers something like those of animals. Among these are Volvox, the Desmidiacae, and the siliceous Diatomaceae.
Spermatic animalcules. See Spermatozoa.






Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48








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"Animalcule" Quotes from Famous Books



... then transferred to a kind of marsupial pouch, analogous to that of the kangaroo, where their development proceeds. After passing through certain changes here, the egg issues from the maternal pouch as an oval body, clothed with cilia—an animalcule in external aspect, and as unlike its parent as can well be imagined. For awhile the little creature dances freely through the water, and leads a gay, roving life; but at last it prepares to 'settle;' selects a fitting locality; applies one extremity of its body to ...
— Chambers' Edinburgh Journal - Volume XVII., No 423, New Series. February 7th, 1852 • Various

... the jargon of the sea. Haul upon haul, flounders and soles and dabs, And phosphorescent animalcule, Sand, seadrift, weeds, ...
— Silverpoints • John Gray

... every fresh specimen of Cryptogamia which I placed beneath my instrument I believed that I discovered wonders of which the world was as yet ignorant. I remember well the thrill of delight and admiration that shot through me the first time that I discovered the common wheel animalcule (Rotifera vulgaris) expanding and contracting its flexible spokes, and seemingly rotating through the water. Alas! as I grew older, and obtained some works treating of my favorite study, I found that I was only on the threshold ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. I., No. 3, January 1858 - A Magazine of Literature, Art, and Politics • Various

... dance upon the point of a needle with the same ease as the angels of the Schoolmen could, in imagination. With these images before your minds, you may well ask, what community of form, or structure, is there between the animalcule and the whale; or between the fungus and the fig-tree? And, a fortiori, between ...
— Lay Sermons, Addresses and Reviews • Thomas Henry Huxley

... from their native haunts; their local attachments are wonderful; they migrate only to return again at the earliest opportunity. Perhaps there is not a living thing, from the hugest animal down to the minutest animalcule, whose pleasant associations are not circumscribed, or that has not some favorite retreats. This universal preference, this love of home, seems to be the element of being,—a constitutional attribute given by the all-wise Creator to bind each separate tribe or community within ...
— Thoughts on African Colonization • William Lloyd Garrison



Words linked to "Animalcule" :   animalculum, organism



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