▪ I. stellate, a. and n.
(ˈstɛlət)
[ad. L. stellātus, f. stella star: see -ate2.]
A. adj.
1. Of the sky: Studded with stars. poet.
| c 1500 Kennedy Poems (Schipper) iv. 27 Þe hevyne stellat, planetis, montanis and fellis, War fair perchiament, and all as Virgillis dyte. |
† 2. Pertaining to or proceeding from the stars.
| 1658 Franck North. Mem. Ded. Virtuosos (1694) p. xi, There you may see the Operation of Elements and stellate Influences. |
3. a. Star-shaped; arranged or grouped in the form of a conventional star or stars; (chiefly in scientific use) radiating from a centre like the rays of a star.
| 1661 Lovell Hist. Anim. & Min. 228 The Stellate Raie is lesse hard..than the Smooth. 1661 Boyle Cert. Physiol. Ess. (1669) 56 Several Stellate Regulusses of both Antimony and Mars. 1704 J. Harris Lex. Techn. I, Stellate Plants, are by the Botanists called such Plants as have their Leaves growing on the Stalks at certain Intervals or Distances, in the form of a Radiant Star. 1752 tr. Heister's Surg. (1768) II. 363 marg., The Stellate Bandage. 1755 Phil. Trans. XLIX. 17 The uniform stellate form of snow is very remarkable. 1832 Lindley Introd. Bot. i. ii. 40 In many plants the hairs grow in clusters,..and are occasionally united at their base: such are called stellate. 1857 Miller Elem. Chem., Org. 272 The Sulphate..crystallizes in stellate groups of silky needles. 1872 H. A. Nicholson Palæont. 111 In their form the Star-fishes differ considerably, though in most the figure is markedly stellate. 1876 Dunglison Med. Lex., Stellate Ligament, a name given to the anterior costo-vertebral ligament, from its shape. 1880 Sollas in Ann. & Mag. Nat. Hist. Ser. v. V. 257 The stellate spicules..are produced within the interior of cells. |
b. Comb. Esp. in Anat., as stellate cell, any of various types of cell with long processes, as a Langerhans cell, a Kupffer cell, or an astrocyte (sense a); stellate ganglion, the lowest of the three cervical ganglia of the sympathetic trunk; stellate reticulum, a layer of cells with long processes within the enamel organ of a developing tooth.
| 1870 Hooker Stud. Flora 32 Draba muralis, suberect or prostrate, stellate-hispid. 1884 Bower & Scott De Bary's Phaner. 130 Stellate-branched fibres occur in the foliage-leaf of Sciadopitys. 1890, etc. [see Langerhans]. 1895 A. H. Smith Dental Microsc. p. xvii, Stellate reticulum of enamel organ. 1899 Allbutt's Syst. Med. VI. 300 The patches, examined microscopically, are found to consist of embryonic round cells, spindle and stellate cells arranged in layers. 1901, etc. [see Kupffer]. 1918 Gray's Anat. (ed. 20) 935 The accelerator fibres of the heart leave mainly through the second and third thoracic nerves and pass to the stellate ganglion. 1921 Tilney & Riley Form & Function Central Nervous Syst. xli. 749 Immediately beneath the layers of large and medium-sized pyramidal cells is a stratum containing a number of small monopolar stellate cells belonging exclusively to the Golgi type II. 1945 [see astrocyte]. 1969 W. A. Beresford Lect. Notes Histol. xxiv. 169 ‘Mesectoderm’ cells..induce overlying ectodermal lamina to separate into tooth germs and provide for each an enamel organ with its pulp/stellate reticulum and inner and outer epithelia. 1980 Gray's Anat. (ed. 36) 1129/1 The cervicothoracic (stellate) ganglion is..much larger than the middle cervical ganglion, being probably formed by the coalescence of the lower two cervical segmented ganglia with the first thoracic. |
B. n. A stellate sponge-spicule.
| 1880 Sollas in Ann. & Mag. Nat. Hist. Ser. v. V. 132 Stelletta... The skeleton consists of long-shafted spicules, minute hair-like spicules, and stellates. 1887 ― in Encycl. Brit. XXII. 417/2 (Sponge) By reduction of the spire the spiraster passes into the stellate or aster. |
Hence ˈstellately adv.
| 1847 W. E. Steele Field Bot. 106 Leaves plane, lanceolate, stellately hairy. 1848 Dana Zooph. 283 Surface lamello⁓striate, and usually stellately so, stars not circumscribed. 1884 Bower & Scott De Bary's Phaner. 58 One may, for instance, call the flat horizontal appendages of the Elæagneæ,..stellately branched, multicellular hairs. |
▪ II. stellate, v.
(ˈstɛleɪt)
[f. L. stellāt-, ppl. stem of stellāre f. stella star.]
trans. To make stellate or star-shaped.
| 1859 Cayley Math. Papers (1891) IV. 82 Each face is formed by stellating a face of the great dodecahedron. 1948 [see stellation 7]. |