BYSSUS • FREE TRANSLATOR.ORG • Definition of Byssus

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noun

Byssus n. (pl. E. byssuses; L. byssi)

A cloth of exceedingly fine texture, used by the ancients. It is disputed whether it was of cotton, linen, or silk. (Written also byss and byssin)

(Zool.) A tuft of long, tough filaments which are formed in a groove of the foot, and issue from between the valves of certain bivalve mollusks, as the Pinna and Mytilus, by which they attach themselves to rocks, etc.

(Bot.) An obsolete name for certain fungi composed of slender threads.

Asbestus.

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Etymology of 'Byssus'

Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48

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"Byssus" Quotes from Famous Books

... Plantarum for a sub-class of Cryptogamia, the members of which presented this character in a greater or less degree. Of the fifteen genera included by Linnaeus among algae, not more than six—viz. Chara, Fucus, Diva and Conferva, and in part Tremella and Byssus—would to-day, in any sense in which the term is employed, be regarded as algae. The excluded genera are distributed among the liverworts, lichens and fungi; but notwithstanding the great advance in knowledge since the time of Linnaeus, the difficulty of deciding ...

— Project Gutenberg Encyclopedia