hyoid

1. not comparableShaped like a U, or like the letter upsilon (υ).

   This stick has a hyoid shape.

   2 more examples

   The hyoid bone in her throat flutters as if discharging some subvocal rosary.

   1969, JG Ballard, The Atrocity Exhibition

   Beebe referred to these never-before-seen creatures as monsters, as devils and dragons. But he though of their bodies as philosophies, traditions of thought, as schools of dragonism. A college drop-out, he wondered what was to be learned at their great university: An astronesthes with batteries of hells-eye lights on its cheeks, a looped string of twenty lavender glowing beads suspended from its hyoid dewlap.

   2023, Brad Fox, The Bathysphere Book: Effects of the Luminous Ocean Depths

   Synonyms: U-shaped

2. not comparablerelationalanatomyOf or pertaining to the hyoid bone.

   Synonyms: hyoidal, hyoideal, hyoidean

plural hyoids

1. abbreviationellipsisanatomyEllipsis of hyoid bone.

   the vulture, relinquishing its title, surely in natural justice gave me a right to this femur, this curiously distorted hyoid?

   1973, Patrick O'Brian, HMS Surprise

2. A curved line resembling the English uppercase letter U.