Pl. spicula. [a. L. spīculum sharp point, sting, dart, etc., dim. of spīca SPIKE sb.]
1. = SPICULA 1 and 1 b.
1746. R. James, Moufet’s Health Improv., 32. Another Class of Medicines … consists of such Substances as sheath the Spicula, or sharp Points of the Acid.
1839. Darwin, Voy. Nat., xvii. 398. We were enveloped in a cloud which was falling, under the form of minute frozen spicula.
1863. Baring-Gould, Iceland, 119. Composed of minute spicula of ice.
transf. and fig. 1840. J. B. Fraser, Trav. Koordistan, etc. II. vi. 146. The wind was … loaded with spicula of cold, which penetrated every limb and joint.
1847. Emerson, Repr. Men, Swedenborg, Wks. (Bohn), I. 317. His style lustrous with points and shooting spicula of thought.
2. Zool. A sharp-pointed process or formation.
1762. trans. Busching’s Syst. Geog., I. 236. Some whales have Spicula in their jaws, as those of Greenland, the Nordcaper, the Fin Fish.
1844. Emerson, Ess., Nature (1901), 313. It publishes itself in creatures, reaching from particles and spicula … to the highest symmetries.
1856–8. W. Clark, Van der Hoeven’s Zool., I. 78. Crowded with microscopic calcareous spicula.
1859. J. Tomes, Dental Surg. (1873), 5. Projecting inwards from the free edge of the outer and inner alveolar walls, we observe small spicula.
b. The excitatory dart in snails.
1838. Penny Cycl., XII. 105/2. Dr. Maton often observed these spicula, but never saw them actually projected from one to the other.
1856–8. W. Clark, Van der Hoeven’s Zool., I. 190. Male genital organ a double spiculum.
1866. R. Tate, Brit. Mollusks, iv. 119. The snails are furnished with spicula—crystalline darts, which they eject at each other.
3. One of the calcareous or siliceous needles found in sponges. Usu. in pl.
1842. Penny Cycl., XXII. 376/1. The calcareous and silicious spicula, and the formation and distribution of the pores and orifices of sponges.
1865. Gosse, Land & Sea (1874), 266. These spicula or needles … make up the firm portion of the Sponge.
1877. Huxley, Anat. Inv. Anim., iii. 114. A multitude of separate spicula, composed of an animal substance … impregnated with carbonate of lime.
attrib. 1883. Saville-Kent, Fisheries Bahamas, 33. In a third group, that of the Calcispongiæ, a spicula skeleton is likewise developed.
4. = SPICULA 4.
1872. Mivart, Anat., 116. The malar bone may be merely a delicate spiculum of bone.
1874. G. Lawson, Dis. Eye (ed. 2), 68. To detect a fine spiculum of steel, or a fragment of glass,… which may have been impacted on the cornea.
