‖ gynæceum
(dʒaɪ-, dʒɪnɪˈsiːəm, g-)
Also 7 gynegium, 8–9 -eceum, -ecæum, 9 -ecium, -æcium.
[L. gynæcēum, -īum, a. Gr. γυναικεῖον, f. γυναικ-, γυνή woman.]
1. Gr. and Rom. Antiq. The women's apartments in a household; any building set apart for women.
| 1723 R. Millar Propagat. Chr. II. ix. 553 Their Gynecæum for young Gentlewomen taught at the expense of their parents. 1832 Gell Pompeiana I. viii. 151 A gynecæum or apartment for the women and children. 1847 Tennyson Princ. iii. 262 Women, up till this Cramp'd under worse than South-Sea-isle taboo, Dwarfs of the gynæceum. 1848 Lytton Harold i. i, The lararium was deserted; the gynæcium was still, as in the Roman time, the favoured apartment of the female portion of the household. 1879 Farrar St. Paul (1883) 131 The degradation of the harem and the narrowness of the gynæceum. |
† b. Under the Roman Empire: A textile manufactory. Obs.
| 1610 Holland Camden's Brit. i. 77 The Procurator of the Gynegium of Draperie in Britaine, in which the clothes of the Prince and souldiers were woven. 1781 Gibbon Decl. & F. xvii. II. 56 We had a treasury-chest in London, and a gyneceum or manufacture at Winchester. |
2. Bot. The female organs of a flower, collectively. Now usually spelt gynœcium, having been supposed to be from Gr. οἰκίον house; under the influence of this notion andrœcium has been formed as its correlative.
| 1832 Lindley Introd. Bot. i. ii. §10. 138 The last organ to enumerate in the flower is..the female system or gynæceum of Röper..usually called the pistillum. 1858 A. Gray Lett. (1893) 449 When you speak of ovary in Clematis leave us to gather, from the context, whether you mean, (1) the whole gynæcium; (2) a separate pistil; or, (3) the ovuliferous portion of a pistil. 1875 Bennett & Dyer Sachs' Bot. 477 In Althæa rosea..the filaments form a membranous closed tube which completely envelopes the gynæceum. 1880 Gray Struct. Bot. vi. §1. 165 The aggregate stamens of a flower have been called the Andrœcium; the pistils, the Gynœcium. 1897 Willis Fl. Plants & Ferns I. 59 The rest of the flower is hypogynous (below the gynœceum or carpellary portion). |