CILIA • DICCIONARIO INGLES.COM • Definition of Cilia

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noun

Cilia n. pl.

(Anat.) The eyelashes.

(Biol.) Small, generally microscopic, vibrating appendages lining certain organs, as the air passages of the higher animals, and in the lower animals often covering also the whole or a part of the exterior. They are also found on some vegetable organisms. In the Infusoria, and many larval forms, they are locomotive organs.

(Bot.) Hairlike processes, commonly marginal and forming a fringe like the eyelash.

(Zool.) Small, vibratory, swimming organs, somewhat resembling true cilia, as those of Ctenophora.

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Etymology of 'Cilia'

Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48

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"Cilia" Quotes from Famous Books

... flask-shape; for the most part contractile, especially in the neck region. The posterior end is rounded or pointed. The main character is the mouth-bearing apex, which "sets like a cork in the neck of the flask." One or more circles of long cilia at the base of the mouth portion or upon it. The body is spirally striped. Contractile vacuole terminal, with sometimes one or two further forward. Macronucleus central, globular to elongate, sometimes double. Food mainly ...

— Marine Protozoa from Woods Hole - Bulletin of the United States Fish Commission 21:415-468, 1901 • Gary N. Galkins

... leaf-blade are somewhat hyaline and they may be perfectly even or cut into serrations of fine teeth in various ways. (See fig. 15.) In addition to these minute teeth, there may be long or short cilia. Sometimes the margins are glandular as in ...

— A Handbook of Some South Indian Grasses • Rai Bahadur K. Ranga Achariyar

... of Abingdon-on-Thames appeared, like others, to have begun with that of a lady who built a nunnery. Cilia was the name of this particular lady, and afterwards Hean, her brother, built a monastery, or an abbey, the most substantial remains of which appeared to be the abbey gateway; but as the abbey ...

— From John O'Groats to Land's End • Robert Naylor and John Naylor

... respiratory act. The jelly-fishes of this section move as they breathe, and breathe as they move. Hence the name which has been given them—Pulmonigrades. We find the same admirable economy of resources amongst the lower animalcules. The cilia which propel them secure the aeration of ...

— Chambers' Edinburgh Journal - Volume XVII., No 423, New Series. February 7th, 1852 • Various

... (H.S. Jennings, "The Behavior of the Lower Animals". Columbia U. Press, N.Y. 1906.) a Paramoecium constantly tends to swerve towards the aboral side of its body owing to certain peculiarities in the set and power of its cilia. But the tendency to swim in a circle, thus produced, is neutralised by the rotation of the creature about its longitudinal axis. Thus the direction of the swerves IN RELATION TO THE PATH of the organism is always changing, with the result that the creature moves in what approximates to a straight ...

— Darwin and Modern Science • A.C. Seward and Others