▪ I. reticulate, a.
(rɪˈtɪkjʊlət)
[ad. L. rēticulāt-us, f. rēticulum: see reticule. So It. reticulato, Sp. and Pg. reticulado, F. réticulé.]
a. Reticulated.
| 1658 Sir T. Browne Gard. Cyrus iii. 147 The like Reticulate grain is observable in some Russia Leather. 1658 ― Hydriot. Ded., We pretend not to multiply vegetable divisions by Quincuncial and Reticulate plants. 1688 Holme Armoury iii. 457/1 Reticulate, or Net Worke, walls made Net-wayes or Loseng-wise. 1703 Phil. Trans. XXIII. 1419 The branches of this [coral] run one into another without any reticulate order. 1785 Martyn Rousseau's Bot. xxxii. (1794) 502 Morel is a fungus that is reticulate or netted all over the outside or upper surface. 1826 Good Bk. Nat. (1834) II. 21 The neuropterous insects, or those with 4 reticulate or net-work wings. 1864 Neale Seatonian Poems 86 With light and shade reticulate. 1897 Allbutt's Syst. Med. III. 944 When the inner surface is magnified it appears to be reticulate. 1965 A. Holmes Princ. Physical Geol. (ed. 2) 1279/2 (Index), Reticulate (trellised) drainage. 1968 R. W. Fairbridge Encycl. Geomorphol. 90/1 A stream or river bed is said to have a braided pattern when the deeper channels form a lacy or reticulate network of divergent and convergent members. Ibid. 961/2 (caption) Braided pattern (‘reticulate drainage’) in semiarid environment. |
| Comb. 1870 Hooker Stud. Flora 377 Stem with 1–2 whorls of reticulate-veined leaves. 1880 Hogg & Johnson Wild Fl. XI. Pl. 811 Reticulate-leaved willow, Salix Reticulata. |
b. spec. in Bot., as an epithet of one kind of thickening of the walls of xylem elements.
| 1873 F. H. Hooker tr. Le Maout & Decaisne's Gen. Syst. Bot. 116 Cells may either be homogeneous, or punctate, or rayed, or reticulate, or spiral. 1907 W. C. Stevens Plant Anat. vii. 109 The tracheids are elongated cells especially adapted to be water carriers by numerous thin places in the walls in the form of bordered pits or associated with spiral, annular, or reticulate thickenings. 1976 Bell & Coombe tr. Strasburger's Textbk. Bot. (rev. ed.) ii. ii. 304 Now begins the more extensive differentiation, particularly of the cell wall... The wall becomes thickened, usually by a process of opposition. In the conducting elements, for example, annular, spiral or reticulate thickenings are formed, and lignification sets in. |
▪ II. reticulate, v.
(rɪˈtɪkjʊleɪt)
[Back-formation from reticulated a.]
1. a. trans. To divide or mark in such a way as to resemble network. Also fig.
| 1787 Jefferson Writ. (1859) II. 136 Spurs or ramifications of high mountains,..as it were, reticulating these provinces. 1833 Lyell Princ. Geol. III. 356 The granite, in this locality, often sends forth so many veins as to reticulate the limestone and schist. 1853 Kane Grinnell Exp. xlii. (1856) 385 Dark rivers, exhaling..frost-smoke, reticulated the entire surface. 1871 Alabaster Wheel of Law 252 The numerous canals and branches of the river which reticulate the flat alluvial plain. 1971 Nature 17 Dec. 394/1 The central device employed in network thermodynamics is the conceptual separation of ‘reversible’ and ‘irreversible’ processes. That is, we mentally reticulate the system into subsystems, each of which either stores energy reversibly or dissipates energy without storage. |
b. To form or make (a net). rare—1.
| 1832 Downes Lett. I. 244 Access to it was..prevented by a horrible net of cobweb, and a band of the hideous artificers by which it had been reticulated. |
2. intr. To divide so as to form a network, or something having that appearance.
| 1862 M. Hopkins Hawaii 26 After pursuing the great stream for some miles it reticulated into..many rivulets. |
Hence reˈticulating ppl. a.
| 1841 Forbes Hist. Brit. Star-fishes 102 The disk and rays are covered with oblong reticulating tubercles. 1850 Dana Geol. App. i. 717 The veins do not so completely lose their reticulating character. 1876 Page Adv. Text-bk. Geol. iii. 54 Showing a thousand reticulating fissures. |