Definition of "nostoc" [nos•toc]

• A freshwater blue-green alga of the genus Nostoc, forming spherical colonies of filaments embedded in a gelatinous substance. (noun)

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.

• "Dr. Edwards writes of the substance that had so completely, or beautifully -- if beauty is completeness -- been identified as nostoc -- "It turned out to be lung-tissue also.""
• "I told him that the phlegm was a vegetable called nostoc, and he thereupon concluded that too much learning had turned my brain, and, fully persuaded of his own complete knowledge of nature, was pleased to be very facetious at my expense."
• "Cosmical gelatinous vesicles, similar to the organic 'nostoc' (masses which have been supposed since the Middle Ages to be connected with shooting stars), and those pyrites of Sterlitamak, west of the Uralian Mountains, which are said to have constituted the interior of hailstones, * must both be classed among the mythical fables of meteorology."