Definition of "ventricose" []

• Inflated, swollen, or distended, especially on one side: the ventricose gullet of an insect. (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.

• "Campanulate: bell-shaped: more or less ventricose at the base and a little recurved at the margin."
• "+Gills+ far remote from the stem, with a broad plano-depressed cartilaginous collar, crowded, ventricose, broader in front, soft, whitish, sometimes becoming dusky at the edge."
• "They are narrow or wide, swell out in the middle (ventricose), are curved like a bow (arcuate), and have a sudden wave or sinus in the edge near the stem (sinuate)."