a. [f. FŒT-US + -AL.] Of or pertaining to or of the nature of a fœtus; in the condition of a fœtus.
1811. B. Waterhouse, Botanist, ii. 26. The egg-shell is almost entirely filled with a glutinous substance, laid up for the nourishment of the fœtal animal: the one is called the albumen, or white; the other vitellus, or yolk.
1834. J. Forbes, Laennec’s Dis. Chest (ed. 4), 663. The action of the fœtal heart is marked by double pulsations like those of the adult, only much more rapid, being usually double that of the pulse of the mother.
1858. J. H. Bennet, Nutrition, i. 1. During fœtal life the materials of nutrition are elaborated and supplied by the mother.
1859. Darwin, Orig. Spec., xiv. (1878), 397. What can be more curious than the presence of teeth in fœtal whales, which when grown up have not a tooth in their heads; or the teeth, which never cut through the gums, in the upper jaws of unborn calves?
fig. 1820. Coleridge, Lett. (1836), I. 88. Compare this with the no-results obtained from meteorology, a science so misnamed, which so far from being in its infancy is not yet in its fetal state.
1890. J. H. Stirling, Gifford Lect., v. 88–9. Their life was, as it were, foetal as yet, foetal in the State, their mother, and there was the common circulation still between them: the medium of that circulation was the laws familiar to them, the beliefs they all believed, the patrimonial use and wont, and established manners, so to speak, natured in them.
