spicule

IPA: spˈɪkjuɫ

A sharp, needle-like piece.
A tiny glass flake formed during the manufacture of glass vials
(biology) Any of many needle-like crystalline structures that provide skeletal support in marine invertebrates like sponges.
A needle-like mating structure found only in male nematodes.
(astronomy) A jet of matter ejected from the photosphere of the sun.
A small spike of flowers.

Examples of "spicule" in Sentences

But now, as he threaded his way down, that flicker of light was the faint spicule of a star that burned with the hot roar of a nova.
Any spicule, any prominence, would long since have either fallen back into the chromosphere, or blown away entirely…but not this thing.
Any spicule, any prominence, would long since have either fallen back into the chromosphere, or blown away entirely… but not this thing.
The sea urchin larval spicule is a model system for biominerals, and the first one in which the amorphous calcium carbonate precursor was discovered in 1997 by the same Israeli group co-authoring the current PNAS paper.
The ice storm was no longer the gusting, swirling fog of that morning but a driving wall of stiletto-tipped spears, near-lethal in its ferocity, highspeed ice-spicule lances that would have skewered their way through the thickest cardboard or shattered in a second a glass held in your hand.