Monday, November 26, 2012

amygdaliform

amygdaliform \uh-MIG-duh-luh-fawrm\, adjective:

Shaped like an almond.

She is naturally blonde, pale, with amygdaliform eyes and high cheekbones.
-- Gulnar Nazarkhan, The Secret World
The size and shape of the spores are quite distinctive (globose to subglobose, ovoid, elongate and often almond-shaped – amygdaliform) and with surface ornamentation which may be coarse or fine and individual ornamentation may be low or high and blunt and pointed.
-- Alec Wood, What Cortinarius Is That?

Amygdaliform derives from the Greek amygdale, "almond." -form is the common suffix denoting "in the shape of." A portion of the human brain is known as the amygdala, named for its resemblance to almonds.

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