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Corpuscle   Listen
noun
Corpuscle  n.  
1.
A minute particle; an atom; a molecule.
2.
(Anat.) A protoplasmic animal cell; esp., such as float free, like blood, lymph, and pus corpuscles; or such as are imbedded in an intercellular matrix, like connective tissue and cartilage corpuscles. See Blood. "Virchow showed that the corpuscles of bone are homologous with those of connective tissue."
3.
(Physics) An electron. (archaic)
Red blood corpuscles (Physiol.), in man, yellowish, biconcave, circular discs varying from 1/3500 to 1/3200 of an inch in diameter and about 1/12400 of an inch thick. They are composed of a colorless stroma filled in with semifluid haemoglobin and other matters. In most mammals the red corpuscles are circular, but in the camels, birds, reptiles, and the lower vertebrates generally, they are oval, and sometimes more or less spherical in form. In Amphioxus, and most invertebrates, the blood corpuscles are all white or colorless.
White blood corpuscles (Physiol.), rounded, slightly flattened, nucleated cells, mainly protoplasmic in composition, and possessed of contractile power. In man, the average size is about 1/2500 of an inch, and they are present in blood in much smaller numbers than the red corpuscles.






Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48








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"Corpuscle" Quotes from Famous Books



... observable, is varied. It may cause the corpuscles to run too closely together, and to adhere in rolls; it may modify their outline, making the clear-defined, smooth, outer edge irregular or crenate, or even starlike; it may change the round corpuscle into the oval form, or, in very extreme cases, it may produce what I may call a truncated form of corpuscles, in which the change is so great that if we did not trace it through all its stages, we should be puzzled to know whether the object looked at were indeed a blood-cell. All ...
— Grappling with the Monster • T. S. Arthur

... living corpuscle, newly animalized, have received any increase in consistence and in dimensions of the parts contained, when, as the result of the organic movement which it enjoys, it will be subjected to successive changes ...
— Lamarck, the Founder of Evolution - His Life and Work • Alpheus Spring Packard



Words linked to "Corpuscle" :   particle, stuff, malpighian corpuscle, Pacinian corpuscle, white corpuscle, WBC, molecule, leucocyte, white cell, blood corpuscle, vegetative cell, packed cells, grain, leukocyte, white blood cell, red blood cell, mote, material, chylomicron, white blood corpuscle, identification particle



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