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A falling in of the surface; a sinking below its true place; a cavity or hollow; as, roughness consists in little protuberances and depressions.

The muscular and tendinous partition separating the cavity of the chest from that of the abdomen; the midriff.

To make a mark or cavity on or in, by a blow or by pressure; to dent. Donne. Tennyson.

The state of being concave, or like a dish, or the degree of such concavity; as, the dish of a wheel.

An unnatural collection of serous fluid in any serous cavity of the body, or in the subcutaneous cellular tissue. Dunglison.

A cavity in a rock, having its interior surface studded with crystals and sometimes filled with water; a geode.

The tough, fibrous membrane, which lines the cavity of the skull and spinal column, and surrounds the brain and spinal cord; -- frequently abbreviated to dura.

bleating of a goat, heard on applying the ear to the chest in certain diseases within its cavity, as in pleurisy with effusion.

Having but one cell, or cavity; not divided by a septum or partition.

A collection of blood, pus, or other fluid, in some cavity of the body, especially that of the pleura. Dunglison.

A fold of the endoderm, which projects into the blood cavity of ascidians. See Tunicata.

A perivisceral cavity which arises as an outgrowth or outgrowths from the digestive tract; distinguished from a schizocoele, which arises by a splitting of the mesoblast of the embryo.

interior of the stomach; -- applied to a mode of budding from the interior of the gastric cavity, in certain hydroids.

A saddle-shaped cavity to contain the winter eggs, situated on the back of Cladocera.

A cavity formed by the invagination of the outer wall of the body, as the atrium of an amphioxus and possibly the body cavity of vertebrates.

To hollow out; to form cavity or hole in; to make hollow by cutting, scooping, or digging; as, to excavate a ball; to excavate the earth.

A cavity formed by cutting, digging, or scooping. "A winding excavation." Glover.

cy in which the fetus is not in the uterus, but in the Fallopian tube or in the abdominal cavity.

e for their habit of living as commensals in other animals. One species inhabits the gill cavity of the pearl oyster near Panama; another lives within an East Indian holothurian.

That which is used to fill a cavity or any empty space, or to supply a deficiency; as, filling for a cavity in a tooth, a depression in a roadbed, the space between exterior and interior walls of masonry, the pores of open-grained wood, the space between the outer and inner planks of a vessel, etc.