calamus
noun, proper noun
Forms calamuses calami
- noun Sweet flag (Acorus calamus).
- noun (ornithology) A quill; the hard, horny, hollow, and more or less transparent part of the stem or scape of a feather.
- noun A fish of genus Calamus in family Sparidae; certain porgies.
- noun A palm in genus Calamus, of rattan palms.
- noun (botany) A fistular stem without an articulation.
- noun (Christianity, historical) Synonym of fistula (“tube for sucking Eucharist wine”).
- proper noun A small town in Clinton County, Iowa, United States, named after a creek.
- proper noun A town in Dodge County, Wisconsin, United States.
Synonyms
fistula sweet flag sweet calamus myrtle flag flagroot Acorus calamus genus Calamus quill shaft
Etymology
Learned borrowing from Latin calamus (“reed, cane”). Doublet of culm, haulm, helm (Etymology 4, stalk), qalam, and shawm.
Webster’s 1913
- noun The indian cane, a plant of the Palm family. It furnishes the common rattan. See Rattan, and Dragon's blood.
- noun A species of Acorus (A. 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.
Etymology [L., a reed. See Halm.]
Sources: Wiktionary · WordNet 3.0 · Webster’s 1913 — from the Wiktionary entry “calamus”, CC BY-SA 4.0. Details