Definition of "exuviae" [ex•u•vi•æ]

• The cast-off skins or coverings of various organisms, such as the shells of crabs or the external coverings of the larvae and nymphs of insects. (noun-plural)

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.

• "If I understand what was being said correctly, then "exuviae" classical meaning - armour stripped from a dead enemy, or skin taken from or shed by an animal is correctly a plural term that is used as a singular, in the same way that English speakers say "I take off my clothes" and never "I take off my cloth"."
• "Just out of exuviae, wings still folded, photo OK but not great."
• "While the body of the poem often stands in for the body of the poet, acting as a surrogate for the experience of such a biography, the body of the text in this case has gone missing, leaving behind only the exuviae of the work itself — the set of afterthoughts found in annotations and digressions, allegedly presented after the fact by experts, who have prepared this text for scholastic discussion."