Pl. sulci. [L. = furrow, trench, ditch, wrinkle.]
1. a. A groove made with an engraving tool. b. A trench. c. A hollow or depression in the land. rare.
1662. Evelyn, Sculptura, 126. Monsieur Bosse’s invention of the Eschoppe, does render the making of this Sulcus, much more facile. Ibid. (1675), Terra (1729), 14. The Sulcus or Trench be made to run from North to South.
1901. A. Trotter, East Galloway Sk., 158/2. The house … is situated in a sulcus of fertile land.
2. Anat. A groove or furrow in a body, organ or tissue.
1744. trans. Boerhaave’s Inst., III. 297. The sensible Papillæ lie concealed in the Sulci formed by the Cuticle.
1766. Complete Farmer, s.v. Shoeing, The sulcus of the inner surface of the hoof.
1822–7. Good, Study Med. (1829), V. 252. Hydatids have found the means of forming a nidus in some one of the sulci of the womb.
1872. Coues, N. Amer. Birds, 27. Sulci, like carinæ, are of all shapes, sizes and positions.
1897. Allbutt’s Syst. Med., IV. 227. A distinct sulcus between the liver and gall bladder is nearly always perceptible to the touch.
b. spec. A fissure between two convolutions of the brain.
1833. Cycl. Pract. Med., I. 286/2. The sulci which separate the convolutions.
1840. G. V. Ellis, Anat., 15. On its under surface, near the median fissure of the brain, is a sulcus, which lodges the olfactory nerve.
1899. Allbutt’s Syst. Med., VII. 273. That portion of the cerebral hemisphere which lies anterior to the precentral sulcus.
3. Bot. The lamella in some fungi.
1856. Henslow, Dict. Bot. Terms, 90.
