a. [ad. mod.L. aciculāris, f. ACICULA a small needle. See -AR.] Needle-like; resembling a slender needle or bristle, as the leaves of pine-trees, and various crystals.
1794. Pearson, in Phil. Trans., LXXXIV. 396. Oxalic acid produced immediately a precipitation of white acicular crystals.
1836–9. Todd, Cycl. Anat. & Phys., II. 234/2. The phosphate … of lime [forms] small acicular prisms.
1848. Dana, Zooph., 449. With long acicular, and nearly naked branchlets.
1857. H. Miller, Test. of Rocks, 496. Coniferous trees, that retain at all seasons their coverings of acicular spiky leaves.
1860. Ruskin, Mod. Painters, V. VIII. iii. § 5. 182. Their trees always had a tendency to congeal into little acicular thorn-hedges.
