dissilient

English

Etymology

From Latin dissiliens, dissilientis, present participle of dissilire (“to leap asunder”): dis- + salire (“to leap”).

Adjective

dissilient (comparative more dissilient, superlative most dissilient)

  1. (chiefly botany) Forcefully breaking apart or bursting open; primed to do so; dehiscing explosively.
    • 1835, James Main, Illustrations of Vegetable Physiology, […] , second edition, London: Orr and Smith, Paternoster-Row: Bradbury and Evans, Whitefrairs, pages 84–85:
      We may, however, notice Impàtiens, merely for the purpose of alluding to the dissilient property of its capsules, which, when ripe, burst with such force as to scatter the seeds to a considerable distance around.
    a dissilient pericarp

Part or all of this entry has been imported from the 1913 edition of Webster’s Dictionary, which is now free of copyright and hence in the public domain. The imported definitions may be significantly out of date, and any more recent senses may be completely missing.
(See the entry for “dissilient”, in Webster’s Revised Unabridged Dictionary, Springfield, Mass.: G. & C. Merriam, 1913, →OCLC.)

Latin

Verb

dissilient

  1. third-person plural future active indicative of dissiliō
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