Pl. calices. [L. calix cup (see CHALICE). On account of the running together of this and the Græco-Latin calyx ‘outer covering of a fruit or flower-bud’ (cf. It. calice, Sp. caliz, F. calice), modern scientific writers rarely distinguish the two, but commonly write both as CALYX. The diminutives CALICLE and CALYCLE are more generally distinguished.]
A cup; a cup-like cavity or organ; e.g., the truncated termination of the branches of the ureter in the kidney; the wall of the Graafian follicle, from which an ovum has escaped; the cup-like body of a crinoid or coral which is placed on the top of the stem; the body of a Vorticella; a cup-shaped depression in the upper part of the theca of a coralligenous zoophyte, which contains the stomach-sac (sometimes in French form calice).
1708. Motteux, Rabelais, V. xlii. (1737), 180. A Carbuncle jetted out of its Calix or Cup, as big as an Ostridge’s Egg.
1801. Med. Jrnl., V. 284. Remaining in one of the calices or infundibula in the kidneys.
1869. Nicholson, Zool., xii. (1880), 160. A shallower or deeper cup-shaped depression, which contains the stomach-sac of the polype, and is known as the ‘calice.’
1881. Mivart, Cat, 233. The part surrounding this prominence is called the calix.
