Advertisement - Continue reading below

Definition of "capitate" [cap•i•tate]

  • Anatomy Enlarged and globular at the tip, as a bone of the wrist having a rounded knoblike end. (adjective)
  • Botany Forming a headlike mass or dense cluster, as the flowers of plants in the composite family. (adjective)

American Heritage(R) Dictionary of the English Language, Fifth Edition. Copyright (c) 2011 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. All rights reserved.

Use "capitate" in a sentence
  • "As Mesorhopella but golden, antenna short, capitate, club equal funicle, funicles transverse."
  • "It had been an extended ordeal of vomit and hallucination, a long night spent surfing alternating waves of horror and ecstasy-and in the shaky morning when End of Time had finally showed himself, pyramid head and all, Smithe (less overwhelmed by the sight of that capitate curiosity than he might normally have been) found himself somehow disinclined, even unable, to interrogate the medicine man along the lines that he had so carefully prepared."
  • "Small bundles of up to 5 pedunculate capitate inflorescences arise in axillary positions on the young parts of shoots."