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One of a group of univalve shells, having a large aperture or mouth.

The opening through which an animal receives food; the aperture between the jaws or between the lips; also, the cavity, containing the tongue and teeth, between the lips and the pharynx; the buccal cavity.

ntals. -- Nasal index (Anat.), in the skull, the ratio of the transverse the base of the aperture to the nasion, which latter distance is taken as the standard, equal to 100.

A place which is open; a breach; an aperture; a gap; cleft, or hole. We saw him at the opening of his tent. Shak.

The lid closing the aperture of various species of shells, as the common whelk. See Illust. of Gastropoda.

A mouth or aperture, as of a tube, pipe, etc.; an opening; as, the orifice of an artery or vein; the orifice of a wound. Shak. Etna was bored through the top with a monstrous orifice. Addison.

One of the excurrent apertures of sponges.

An opening or aperture; a recess; a recess; a chamber. [Obs.] Spenser. "The cave's inmost overture." Chapman.

A hole made by boring or piercing; an aperture. "Slender perforations." Sir T. Browne.

The lip, or edge of the aperture, of a spiral shell.

The edge of the aperture of a univalve shell.

To pass or flow through, as an aperture, pore, or interstice; to permeate. That labyrinth is easily pervaded. Blackstone.

ss. (Bot.) See Alfilaria. -- Pin hole, a small hole made by a pin; hence, any very small aperture or perforation. -- Pin lock, a lock having a cylindrical bolt; a lock in which pins, arranged by the key, are used instead of tumblers. -- Pin money, an allowance of money, as that made by a husband to his wife, for pri…

A group of cells resembling a stoma, but without any true aperture among them.

The aperture in the iris; the sight, apple, or black of the eye. See the Note under Eye, and Iris. Pin-hole pupil (Med.), the pupil of the eye when so contracted (as it sometimes is in typhus, or opium poisoning) as to resemble a pin hole. Dunglison.

y, a vessel in the form of a cylinder open at one end, or a hollow ball of brass with two apertures, so contrived as to greatly intensify a musical tone by its resonance. It is used for the study and analysis of complex sounds.

A narrow and elongated aperture; a cleft; a fissure.

A rent or long aperture; a chink; a fissure; a crack. Sir T. Browne.

To draw through an eye or aperture.

ike and often bright-colored gills around its head, and usually an operculum to close the aperture of its tube when it retracts.