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A plant of the genus Callistephus. Many varieties (called China asters, German asters, etc.) are cultivated for their handsome compound flowers.

A genus of echinoderms.

Radiated, with diverging rays; as, asteriated sapphire.

Of or pertaining to the Asterioidea. -- n.

A class of Echinodermata including the true starfishes. The rays vary in number and always have ambulacral grooves below. The body is starshaped or pentagonal.

The point on the side of the skull where the lambdoid, parieto- mastoid and occipito-mastoid sutures.

The smaller of the two otoliths found in the inner ear of many fishes.

The figure of a star, thus,

An asterisk, or mark of reference. [R.]

In or at the hinder part of a ship; toward the hinder part, or stern; backward; as, to go astern.

Not sternal; -- said of ribs which do not join the sternum.

A starlike body; esp. one of the numerous small planets whose orbits lie between those of Mars and Jupiter; -- called also planetoids and minor planets.

Of or pertaining to an asteroid, or to the asteroids.

A genus of fishes, some of which were eighteen or twenty feet long, found in a fossil state in the Old Red Sandstone. Hugh Miller.

(Myth.)

A fossil plant from the coal formations of Europe and America, now regarded as the branchlets and foliage of calamites.

To start up; to befall; to escape; to shun. [Obs.] Spenser.

A provisional name for a plant which has not had its flowers botanically examined, and therefore has not been referred to its proper genus.

e. The name is used in this sense by Pliny. It is sometimes distinguished as oriental alabaster.

See Aleconner. [Eng.]