acicular

From Latin aciculāris.

• (US) IPA^(key): /əˈsɪk.jə.lɚ/

• Audio (US):

  (file)

• Rhymes: -ɪkjʊlə(ɹ)

acicular (not comparable)

1. Needle-shaped; slender like a needle or bristle.

   Near-synonyms: needlelike, pinlike

   • 1992, Oliver Sacks, Migraine, Berkeley: University of California Press, revised and expanded edition, Part 5, Chapter 17, p. 279,^[1]

     Sometimes these networks have an acicular or crystalline appearance, and may grow visibly, sometimes with sudden jerks, “like frost on a windowpane,” or “primitive plants.”

2. Having sharp points like needles.
3. (botany) Of a leaf, slender and pointed, needle-like.

   the acicular foliage of coniferous trees

   • 1860, John Ruskin, chapter 3, in Modern Painters […], volume V, London: Smith, Elder and Co., […], →OCLC, part VIII (Of Ideas of Relation:—I. Of Invention Formal.), page 189:

     […] though fond of foliage, their trees always had a tendency to congeal into little acicular thorn-hedges, and never tossed free.

acicular m or f (plural aciculares)

1. acicular (needle-shaped)

• “acicular”, in Dicionário Aulete Digital (in Portuguese), Rio de Janeiro: Lexikon Editora Digital, 2008–2026
• “acicular”, in Dicionário Priberam da Língua Portuguesa (in Portuguese), Lisbon: Priberam, 2008–2026

Borrowed from French aciculaire.

acicular m or n (feminine singular aciculară, masculine plural aciculari, feminine/neuter plural aciculare)

1. acicular

• “acicular”, in DEX online—Dicționare ale limbii române (Dictionaries of the Romanian language) (in Romanian), 2004–2026

• IPA^(key): /aθikuˈlaɾ/ [a.θi.kuˈlaɾ] (Spain, Equatorial Guinea)
• IPA^(key): /asikuˈlaɾ/ [a.si.kuˈlaɾ] (Latin America, Philippines)
• Rhymes: -aɾ
• Syllabification: a‧ci‧cu‧lar

acicular m or f (masculine and feminine plural aciculares)

1. acicular

• “acicular”, in Diccionario de la lengua española [Dictionary of the Spanish Language] (in Spanish), online version 23.8.1, Royal Spanish Academy [Spanish: Real Academia Española], 15 December 2025