spicula

1. pluralplural of spiculum

plural spiculas · plural spiculae

1. A little spike; a spikelet or spiculum.

   Introducing the alum-cell, and placing the coating of hoar-frost at the intensely luminous focus of the electric lamp, not a spicula of the dazzling frost is melted.

   1906, John Tyndall, Six Lectures on Light

   2 more examples

   He concludes this Diſſertation, by endeavouring to explain the Manner of its [olive oil's] operating, which he attributes to its fat inviſcating Nature, whereby it ſheathes the Spicula of the Poiſon.

   1738 December, C. Mortimer, “VI. An Abstract by C. Mortimer, M.D. Secr[etary of the] R[oyal] S[ociety] of an Inaugural Dissertation Published at Wittemberg 1736. by Dr. Abraham Vater, F.R.S. Concerning the Cure of the Bite of a Viper, Cured by Sallad-oil.”, in Philosophical Transactions. Giving Some Account of the Present Undertakings, Studies, and Labours, of the Ingenious, in Many Considerable Parts of the World, volume XXXIX, number 451, London: Printed for T. Woodward, […] ; and C. Davis […] ; printers to the Royal Society, →OCLC, page 443

   And yet Thoreau camps down by Walden Pond and shows us that absolutely nothing in Nature has ever yet been described,--not a bird nor a berry of the woods, nor a drop of water, nor a spicula of ice, nor summer, nor winter, nor sun, nor star.

   1861, Various, Atlantic Monthly, Volume 8, No. 47, September, 1861

2. A pointed fleshy appendage.

   Nature 'publishes itself in creatures, reaching from particles and spicula, through transformation on transformation to the highest symmetries.

   1904, John Morley, Critical Miscellanies, Vol. 1, Essay 5, Emerson