a. [f. as prec. + -OUS.]
1. a. Composed of or containing filaments or thread-like parts. b. Resembling a filament or thread; thread-like.
1671. Grew, The Anatomy of Plants, I. ii. § 8 (1682), 12. The filamentous Extremities of some Roots.
1727. Bradley, Fam. Dict., s.v. Alum, Stone alum; it is nothing but a filamentous Talk soft to the touch.
1789. A. Crawford, in Med. Commun., II. 355. A saturated solution of the the former salt, when suddenly cooled, shoots into long filamentous chrystals.
1827. Faraday, Chem. Manip., iv. 101. When in combustion, the flame though pale produces intense heat, as may be proved by introducing a small platina wire or other piece of filamentous matter into it.
1831. R. Knox, Cloquet’s Anat., 609. A layer of dense and close filamentous cellular tissue unites the muscular to the mucous membrane.
1860. Gosse, The Romance of Natural History 165. It is a most restless little rogue; ranging among the filamentous leaves of the Myriophyllum with incessant activity, he now pokes his way through some narrow aperture, using his curious forked foot as a point of resistance, now pauses to nibble among the decaying rind, and now scuttles off through the open water to some other part.
1871. Darwin, Desc. Man, II. xiii. 74. The barbs of the feathers in various widely-distinct birds are filamentous or plumose, as with some Herons, Ibises, Birds of Paradise, and Gallinaceæ.
2. Of a plant: Bearing filaments or thread-like parts.
1835. Lindley, Introd. Bot. (1848), II. 125. Another anomalous body simulating fruit, if it be not a male flower, frequently occurs in some of the filamentous tribes.
1871. Oliver, Elem. Bot., II. 295. Many of these filamentous species [of Algæ] (Confervoideæ) multiply themselves by the contents of the cells which form their filaments.
3. Of or pertaining to a filament or filaments.
1860. Tyndall, Glac., II. xxxiii. 421. The seams, moreover, were developed in portions of the white ice which were near the centre of the glacier, and where consequently filamentous sliding was entirely out of the question.
