| floating organ | An organ with loose attachments, permitting its displacement. Synonym: floating organ, ptotic organ. (05 Mar 2000) |
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| floating | 1. Buoyed upon or in a fluid; a, the floating timbers of a wreck; floating motes in the air. 2. Free or lose from the usual attachment; as, the floating ribs in man and some other animals. 3. Not funded; not fixed, invested, or determined; as, floating capital; a floating debt. "Trade was at an end. Floating capital had been withdrawn in great masses from the island. <medicine>" (Macaulay) Floating anchor See Dock. Floating harbor, a breakwater of cages or booms, anchored and fastened together, and used as a protection to ships riding at anchor to leeward. <botany> Floating heart, threads which span several other threads without being interwoven with them, in a woven fabric. Source: Websters Dictionary (01 Mar 1998) |
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| floating cartilage | A loose piece of cartilage within a joint cavity, detached from the articular cartilage or from a meniscus. Synonym: loose cartilage. (05 Mar 2000) |
| floating kidney | The abnormally mobile kidney in nephroptosia. Synonym: movable kidney, wandering kidney. (05 Mar 2000) |
| floating patella | A patella riding high on effusion of the knee. (05 Mar 2000) |
| floating ribs | The two lower ribs on either side that are not attached anteriorly. Synonym: costae fluitantes, costae fluctuantes, vertebral ribs. (05 Mar 2000) |
| floating spleen | A spleen that is palpable because of excessive mobility from a relaxed or lengthened pedicle rather than because of enlargement. Synonym: lien mobilis, movable spleen. (05 Mar 2000) |
| floating villus | A chorionic villus that is not attached to the decidua basalis, but is "free" in the maternal blood of the intervillous spaces. Synonym: floating villus. (05 Mar 2000) |
| free-floating anxiety | In psychoanalysis, a pervasive unrealistic expectation unattached to a clearly formulated concept or object of fear; observed particularly in anxiety neurosis and may be seen in some cases of latent schizophrenia. (05 Mar 2000) |
| annulospiral organ | One of two types of sensory nerve ending associated with a neuromuscular spindle (the other being the flower-spray ending); after entering the muscle spindle, the fibre divides into two flat ribbon-like branches that wind themselves in rings or spirals about the intrafusal muscle fibres. Synonym: annulospiral organ. (05 Mar 2000) |
| auditory organ | Archaic term for gustatory organ. (05 Mar 2000) |
| bojanus organ | <zoology> A glandular organ of bivalve mollusca, serving in part as a kidney. Origin: From Bojanus, the discoverer. Source: Websters Dictionary (01 Mar 1998) |
| vestibular organ | Collective term for the utricle, saccule, and saemicircular ducts of the membranous labyrinth, each having a single patch of ciliated receptor epithelium innervated by the vestibular nerve: macula of sacculus, macula of utriculus, and cristae of the saemicircular ducts. (05 Mar 2000) |
| vestibulocochlear organ | The external, middle, and internal ear. Synonym: organum vestibulocochleare. (05 Mar 2000) |
| vestigial organ | A rudimentary structure in humans corresponding to a functional structure or organ in the lower animals. (05 Mar 2000) |
| visual organ | The eye and its adnexa. Synonym: organum visus, organ of vision. (05 Mar 2000) |