Also 7 -cule. [ad. L. cutīcula, dim. of cutis the skin. Boyle has cuticule (quot. 1685 below), which is the form in Fr.]
1. The EPIDERMIS or scarf-skin of the body.
1615. Crooke, Body of Man, 61. The Scarfe-skin or Cuticle being voide of sense itselfe. Ibid., 70. The Cuticle, which the Greekes call Epidermis, because it runnes vppon the surface of the true skinne.
1685. Boyle, Enq. Notion Nat., 200. The Cuticule or Scarf-skin.
1704. F. Fuller, Med. Gymn. (1711), 37. Let us consider how we can separate the Cuticle from the true Cutis.
1836. Todd, Cycl. Anat., I. 102/2. The cuticle of these animals [i.e., amphibia] is frequently shed.
b. Applied to other superficial skins or integuments; e.g., the transparent membrane that envelopes annelids.
1661. Lovell, Hist. Anim. & Min., Introd. Under it [the tongue of serpents] is a cuticle, which like a vesicle covereth the teeth.
1872. Huxley, Physiol., xii. 278. The shaft of a hair of the head consists of a central pith…; of a cortical substance surrounding this…; and of an outer cuticle.
1888. Rolleston & Jackson, Anim. Life, 198. The cuticle [of the earthworm] is thin, transparent, and variable in thickness in different regions of the body.
c. The cell-wall of Infusoria.
2. Bot. Formerly, the primary integumentary tissue or epidermis; now, a superficial film formed of the cutinized outer layers of the superficial walls of the epidermal cells.
The later usage was introduced by Ad. Brongniart (Ann. des Sci. Nat., Sér. 2, I. 65). It appears in Eng. in Henfrey’s transl. of von Mohl’s Vegetable Cell, 1852, p. 34.
1671. Grew, Anat. Plants, I. ii. § 2. That extreme thin Cuticle which is spread over the Lobes of the Seed.
1807. J. E. Smith, Phys. Bot., 19. The cuticle is formed so as to accommodate itself … to the natural growth of the plant.
1858. Carpenter, Veg. Phys., § 1. The presence of a kind of skin or cuticle, which envelops the whole.
1884. Bower & Scott, De Bary’s Phaner., 29. Epidermis, outer skin, is the name given to the layer of cells which is covered by and produces the cuticle.
† 3. transf. ‘A thin skin formed on the surface of any liquor’ (J.); a film or thin coating.
1657. G. Starkey, Helmont’s Vind., 314. This [salt] being boyled to a Cuticle will shoot like to any other Salt.
1664. Power, Exp. Philos., I. 34. Without breaking thorow the tender cuticle and film of so brittle and thin a substance [an air-bubble].
1704. Newton, Opticks (1721), 363 (J.). When any saline Liquor is evaporated to a Cuticle, and let cool, the Salt concretes in regular Figures.
