CALAMUS • DICCIONARIO INGLES.COM • Definition of Calamus

Add this Dictionary
to your website!
See more options...

Listen

noun

Calamus n. (pl. calami)

(Bot.) The indian cane, a plant of the Palm family. It furnishes the common rattan. See Rattan, and Dragon's blood.

(Bot.) A species of Acorus (Acorus calamus), commonly called calamus, or sweet flag. The root has a pungent, aromatic taste, and is used in medicine as a stomachic; the leaves have an aromatic odor, and were formerly used instead of rushes to strew on floors.

(Zool.) The horny basal portion of a feather; the barrel or quill.

See images of 'Calamus'

Etymology of 'Calamus'

Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48

Share |

"Calamus" Quotes from Famous Books

... out, in reg'lar order, and larnt, I guess, just about as much as you did, about your disappointment and your worry. Then I thought, 'as like as not that woman is having more trouble down upon the island than I know anything about. So, true as calamus is sweet-flag, as soon as you was on your white horse, like the old lady of Banbury Cross, I was in my everyday skiff, and I didn't lose you out of my sight from the minute you started to the minute Peter and Ransom took you on the ferry—but I slid along ...

— A Dream of Empire - Or, The House of Blennerhassett • William Henry Venable

... its creepers, and some of them very curious. The most remarkable are the ratans, belonging to the Calamus genus of palms. Of these I have seen a specimen 250 feet long and an inch in diameter, without a single irregularity, and no appearance of foliage other than the bunch of feathery ...

— Ceylon; an Account of the Island Physical, Historical, and • James Emerson Tennent