calyx - Wiktionary, the free dictionary (original) (raw)

From Wiktionary, the free dictionary

The calyx of a flower is usually green. Its parts are called sepals.

A human kidney with the major and minor calyces labelled.

From Latin calyx, from Ancient Greek κάλυξ (kálux, “case of a bud, husk”). Doublet of chalice and kelch.

calyx (plural calyces or calyxes)

  1. (botany) The outermost whorl of flower parts, comprising the sepals, which covers and protects the petals as they develop.
    Meronym: sepal
    • 1905, Maude Gridley Peterson, How to Know Wild Fruits: A Guide to Plants When Not in Flower by Means of Fruit and Leaf‎[1], Macmillan, page 202:
      Black crowberry. Empetrum nigrum. Crowberry Family. Fruit. — The black drupe is berrylike, globular, and incloses six to nine seedlike nutlets with a seed in each. The calyx is at the base and the stigma is at the apex. The drupes are solitary in the leaf axils. They are juicy, acid, edible, and serve as food for the Arctic birds.
  2. (zoology, anatomy) Any of various cup-like structures.
    1. A chamber in the mammalian kidney through which urine passes.
    2. The crown containing the viscera of crinoids and similar echinoderms, entoprocts, and the polyps of some cnidarians.
    3. A funnel-shaped expansion of the vas deferens or oviduct of insects.
    4. A flattened cap of neuropil in the brain of insects.

the sepals of a flower

anatomy: structure in kidney

zoology: crown of crinoid

From Ancient Greek κᾰ́λῠξ (kắlŭx, “case of a bud; husk”).

calyx m (genitive calycis); third declension

  1. the bud, cup, or calyx of a flower or nut
  2. a plant of two kinds, resembling the arum; perhaps the monk's hood
  3. (transferred sense):
    1. epicarp (the outermost layer of various fruits)
    2. an eggshell
    3. a fitting on a Roman pipe

Third-declension noun.