English

Noun

spicula

1. plural of spiculum

Noun

spicula ‎(plural spiculas or spiculae)

1. A little spike; a spikelet.
   • 1861, Various, Atlantic Monthly, Volume 8, No. 47, September, 1861:

     And yet Thoreau camps down by Walden Pond and shows us that absolutely nothing in Nature has ever yet been described,--not a bird nor a berry of the woods, nor a drop of water, nor a spicula of ice, nor summer, nor winter, nor sun, nor star.

   • 1906, John Tyndall, Six Lectures on Light:

     Introducing the alum-cell, and placing the coating of hoar-frost at the intensely luminous focus of the electric lamp, not a spicula of the dazzling frost is melted.

2. A pointed fleshy appendage.
   • 1904, John Morley, Critical Miscellanies, Vol. 1, Essay 5, Emerson:

     Nature 'publishes itself in creatures, reaching from particles and spicula, through transformation on transformation to the highest symmetries.

Latin

Noun

spīcula

1. nominative plural of spīculum
2. accusative plural of spīculum
3. vocative plural of spīculum

References

• spicula in Charlton T. Lewis and Charles Short (1879) A Latin Dictionary, Oxford: Clarendon Press
• SPICULA in Charles du Fresne du Cange’s Glossarium Mediæ et Infimæ Latinitatis (augmented edition, 1883–1887)
• Félix Gaffiot (1934), “spicula”, in Dictionnaire Illustré Latin-Français, Paris: Hachette.