a. [f. L. flocc-us FLOCK sb.2 + -ULENT.]
1. Resembling flocks or tufts of wool; consisting of loose woolly masses.
1800. trans. Lagrange’s Chem., I. 249. A flocculent precipitate of magnesia.
1804. Abernethy, Surg. Observ., 65. The unorganized deposited matter which had enlarged them, had become putrid, and was washed away, leaving the capsule of the gland, and a congeries of flocculent fibres occupying the interior part of it.
1821. Blackw. Mag., X. Oct., 269–70. Bowles, who not only attempted, but succeeded in sending up some pretty light floculent cirri from some of his sonnets and local descriptions: his odes, however, gravitated most ponderously.
1857. Henfrey, Bot., § 343. In the Agarics the Mushroom is the large fleshy fruit arising from the flocculent mycelium, or ‘spawn.’
2. Of the atmosphere: Holding particles of aqueous vapour in suspension; cf. Flocculus 1.
1878. Smithsonian Inst. Rep., 510. A flocculent condition of the atmosphere, due to the varying density produced by the mingling of aqueous vapor.
3. Covered with a short woolly substance; downy.
1870. Hooker, Stud. Flora, 125. Leaves … more or less pubescent or flocculent below when young.
1874. Coues, Birds N. W., 265. The chicks are not, however, hatched entirely clothed; for the first two or three days they are only densely flocculent on the under parts, the upper being but sparsely downy; soon, however, they are uniformly covered with down, variegated above, plain below.
Hence Flocculently adv.
1885. Manch. Weekly Times, Suppl., 8/1. The petioles were flocculently woolly.
