from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 4th Edition
- n. A body structure or organ resembling a comb, as the ridged part of the eyelid of reptiles and birds.
- n. A scallop of the genus Pecten.
from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License
- n. The bones in the hand between the wrist and the fingers.
- n. The pubic bone.
- n. One of the genus Pecten of scallops.
from the GNU version of the Collaborative International Dictionary of English
- n. A vascular pigmented membrane projecting into the vitreous humor within the globe of the eye in birds, and in many reptiles and fishes; -- also called marsupium.
- n. The pubic bone.
- n. Any species of bivalve mollusks of the genus Pecten, and numerous allied genera (family Pectinidæ); a scallop. See Scallop.
- n. The comb of a scorpion. See Comb, 4 (b).
from The Century Dictionary and Cyclopedia
- In zoology and anatomy, a comb or comb-like part or process; something pectinated; a pectination.
- In conchology: [capitalized] [NL.] The typical genus of the family Pectinidæ, having a regular, suborbicular, auriculate shell, with approximate umbones, and radiating ribs compared to the teeth of a comb; the scallops.
The pecten is shaved either without or after using depilatories, of which more presently.
What birds have instead is a strange structure inside their eye called the pecten oculi, which looks kind of like an old steam radiator dangling into the vitreous humor, which seems to be a metabolic specialization to secrete oxygen and nutrients into the vitreous to supply by diffusion the retina.
Here, however, Habk is a pennyroyal (mentha puligium), and probably alludes to the pecten.
Ad extinguendum coitum, ungantur membra genitalia, et renes et pecten aqua in qua opium Thebaicum sit dissolutum; libidini maxime contraria camphora est, et coriandrum siccum frangit coitum, et erectionem virgae impedit; idem efficit synapium ebibitum.
Nonnullos occidit ingens suppuratio, decem autem excoriatis supersunt plerumque octo: hi pecten habent nullum, ventremque pallida tegit cutis.
It consists of a horse-shoe arch, the face of which is ornamented with gilded glass mosaic, forming the entrance to a semi-circular recess beautifully adorned with arabesques and inscriptions, the top of the dome being a large white marble slab hollowed out in the form of a pecten shell.
This is a large species of pecten, is closely allied to the P. princeps of the English crag.
No body-pile or pecten ever grows upon the excoriated part which preserves through life a livid ashen hue.
He was the first who parted his hair, trimmed his mustachios, cleaned his teeth with the Miswák (tooth-stick), pared his nails, shaved his pecten, snuffed up water, used ablution after stool and wore a shirt (Tabari).
It is white, or of a clear ochre-yellow, with a dull fracture, sometimes conchoidal, sometimes smooth; divided into thin layers, furnishing some balls of pyromac silex, often hollow (at Rio Canimar two leagues east of Matanzas), and petrifications of pecten, cardites, terebratules and madrepores.