hippocampus
(hɪpəʊˈkæmpəs)
Pl. -i.
[a. late L. hippocampus, a. Gr. ἱππόκαµπος, f. ἵππο-ς horse + κάµπος sea-monster.]
1. Mythol. A sea-horse, having two fore-feet, and the body ending in a dolphin's or fish's tail, represented as drawing the car of Neptune and other sea-deities.
| 1606 Drummond of Hawthornden Let. Wks. (1711) 232 Stately pageants..that of Cheapside was of Neptune on a hippocampus, with his Tritons and Næreides. 1840 Hood Kilmansegg, Marriage xxviii, Hearty as hippocampus. |
2. Ichthyol. A genus of small fishes, having a head shaped somewhat like that of a horse; the sea-horse.
| 1576 Fleming Panopl. Epist. 353 The fishe called Hippocampus, is a present and sovereigne remedie, against the byting of a madde dogge. 1863 Miss Sewell Chr. Names II. 279 The quaint little horny hippocampus. |
3. Anat. Each of two elongated eminences (hippocampus major and hippocampus minor) on the floor of each lateral ventricle of the brain; so called from their supposed resemblance to the fish (sense 2).
| 1706 Phillips (ed. Kersey), Hippocampa..in Anatomy. the Processes of Channels of the upper or foremost Ventricles of the Brain. 1863 Sat. Rev. 606/2 A purely unscientific person..capable of going to his grave without the remotest notion whether he had a hippocampus or not, if Mr. Owen and Mr. Huxley had never discussed the subject. |