[mod. ad. L. corpuscul-um, dim. of L. corpus body.]
1. A minute body or particle of matter. Sometimes identified with atom or with molecule.
1660. Boyle, New Exp. Phys.-Mech., i. 25. Each Corpuscle endeavours to beat off all others.
1674. Petty, Disc. Dupl. Proportion, 124. Corpuscles, or the smallest Bodies that can possibly be seen … these Corpuscles are made of Atoms, or the smallest bodies in Nature.
1697. Potter, Antiq. Greece, IV. viii. (1715), 241. For from their Bodies on the Pile do fly Enrag’d Corpuscles justling in the Sky.
1725. Watts, Logic, I. iii. § 4. Who knows what are the figures of the little corpuscles that compose and distinguish different bodies?
1812. Sir H. Davy, Chem. Philos., 56. Whether matter consists of indivisible corpuscles, or physical points.
† b. Little body (of an animal). Obs.
1665. Hooke, Microgr., 197. This pretty little grey Moth … could very nimbly, and as it seem’d very easily move its corpuscle, through the Air, from place to place.
2. Phys. Any minute body (usually of microscopic size), forming a more or less distinct part of the organism.
Often with defining attributes, or specific additions (chiefly in plural), as blood-corpuscles (see also b), lymph-c.; gustatory or taste, tactile or touch c. Malpighian corpuscles: certain minute bodies in the substance of the spleen (splenic c.), and of the kidney. Pacinian c., c. of Vater: minute bulbous bodies enclosing the ends of nerves in various parts of the body, esp. in the fingers and toes.
1741. Monro, Anat. Nerves (ed. 3), 73. The Edges of the semilunar Valves are duplicated with a muscular Corpuscle in the Middle.
1845–6. G. E. Day, trans. Simon’s Anim. Chem., I. 120. Since lymph-corpuscles also pass into the blood, the formation of blood-corpuscles from them in the blood vessels cannot be denied.
1858. Carpenter, Veg. Phys., § 399. Little round corpuscles, which are emitted … from the spore-sacs, and which are the true germ-cells.
1859. G. Wilson, Gateways Knowl. (ed. 3), 99. The tips of the fingers … possess … an unusual supply of certain minute auxiliary bodies called tactile corpuscles.
1878. Bell, Gegenbaur’s Comp. Anat., 15. Such corpuscles of protoplasm as are provided with a nucleus are called cells.
b. esp. (pl.) Minute rounded or discoidal bodies, constituting a large part of the blood in man and other vertebrates.
1845–6. G. E. Day, trans. Simon’s Anim. Chem., I. 106. On shaking the blood with oxygen gas, the corpuscles became brighter and more transparent.
1869. Huxley, Phys. (ed. 3), iii. 65. The particles, or corpuscles, of the blood … called respectively the red corpuscles and the colourless corpuscles.
3. Bot. = CORPUSCULUM 1 b.
