Dictionary

pedicle en · NOUN

Pronunciation

• (Southern-England) audio
• /ˈpɛd.ɪ.kəl/

Etymology

From Latin pedīculus (“little foot”), diminutive of pēs.

Meanings

1. A fleshy line used to attach and anchor brachiopods and some bivalve molluscs to a substrate.
   • A species of shell-fish, often found sticking by its pedicle to the bottom of ships, doing no other injury than deadening the way a little: "Barnacles, termed soland geese In th' islands of the Orcades." 1867, William Henry Smyth, The Sailor's Word-Book:
2. The attachment point for antlers in cervids.
   • His long, rakish horns are mounted on a pedicle that extends above his head, thus accentuating the droll length of his features. 1910, John T. McCutcheon, In Africa:
3. A stalk that attaches a tumour to normal tissue
   • --Figure 3. Fig. 4, Plate 58, represents the neck of the bladder and neighbouring part of the urethra of an ox, in which a polypous growth is seen attached by a long pedicle to the veru montanum and blocking up the neck of the bladder. 1859, Joseph Maclise, Surgical Anatomy:
   • One of these women, a secundipara, had gone two weeks over time, and had a large ovarian cyst, the pedicle of which had become twisted, the fluid in the cyst being sanguineous. 1896, George M. Gould, Anomalies and Curiosities of Medicine:
4. pedicel (any sense)
   • One of the ends is lengthened out into a neck or pedicle, which is as long as the egg proper. 1914, Alexander Teixeira De Mattos, The Mason-bees:
5. peduncle (any sense)
   • The chimpanzee Heschl's gyrus homolog also showed evidence of a strongly excavated middle Heschl's sulcus, within the confines of a single gyral pedicle, predominantly in the right hemisphere. 1998 January 9, Patrick J. Gannon et al., “Asymmetry of Chimpanzee Planum Temporale: Humanlike Pattern of Wernicke's Brain Language Area Homolog”, in Science, volume 279, number 5348, →DOI, pages 220–222:
   • The surface of the extracellular space at the base of the cone pedicle in goldfish has been estimated to be between 0.01 to 0.1 µm 2 depending on the fixation procedure used [ C. A. V. Vandenbranden, et al., Vision Res. 2001 May 11, Maarten Kamermans et al., “Hemichannel-Mediated Inhibition in the Outer Retina”, in Science, volume 292, number 5519, →DOI, pages 1178–1180:
6. Part of a skin or tissue graft temporarily left attached to its original site.
7. A fetter for the foot.
   • 1836 The Memoirs, Private and Political, of Daniel O'Connell In the account of former persecutions, I have read of decapitation, crucifixion, gallowses, manacles, pedicles, thumb- screws, fire and fagot, rocks and pullies, slow fires, red hot gridirons, and boiling lead;
   • two emaciated and thread-bare prisoners are bound with manacles and pedicles to the middle of a wall about four stories high in an immense featureless white room 1996 The Ecocriticism Reader: Landmarks in Literary Ecology - Page 36

Forms

Deriveds

pedicled · bipedicle · transpedicle

Relateds

pedicel