osculant English

Meaning osculant meaning

What does osculant mean?

osculant adjective

— Kissing; hence, touching or meeting; clinging.

— (zoology) Adhering closely; applied to certain creeping animals, such as caterpillars.

— (biology) Intermediate between two genera, groups, families, etc., and having some of the characteristics of each; interosculant.

— (Bantu, _, linguistics) Intermediate between multiple potentially reconstructible protoforms, but having a mismatch in semantics or morphology that cannot be explained through regular patterns of change.