A.Word.A.Day --ocellus

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Today's Word

ocellus

PRONUNCIATION:

(o-SEL-uhs)

MEANING:

noun:
1. A small simple eye common to invertebrates.
2. An eyelike colored spot on an animal (as on peacock feathers, butterfly wings, fish, etc.) or on a leaf of a plant.

ETYMOLOGY:

From Latin ocellus (little eye), diminutive of oculus (eye). Earliest documented use: 1819.

USAGE:

“Each octagonal ocellus in the turtle’s shell grew like a tiny flower.”
G.W. Hawkes; Semaphore; MacMurray & Beck; 1998.

See more usage examples of ocellus in Vocabulary.com’s dictionary.

A THOUGHT FOR TODAY:

Those who compare the age in which their lot has fallen with a golden age which exists only in imagination, may talk of degeneracy and decay; but no man who is correctly informed as to the past, will be disposed to take a morose or desponding view of the present. -Thomas Babington Macaulay, author and statesman (25 Oct 1800-1859)

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