serpula

From Latin serpula. See serpent.

serpula (plural serpulas or serpulae)

1. Any of numerous species of tubicolous annelids of the genus Serpula and allied genera of the family Serpulidae that secrete a calcareous tube, usually irregularly contorted, but sometimes spirally coiled, with a wreath of plumelike and often bright-colored gills around its head, and usually an operculum to close the aperture of its tube when it retracts.

   Synonyms: calcareous tubeworm, serpulid tubeworm, fanworm, plume worm

• “serpula”, in Webster’s Revised Unabridged Dictionary, Springfield, Mass.: G. & C. Merriam, 1913, →OCLC.

• epurals, perusal

From serpō (“crawl”). Seems to end in the diminutive suffix -ula and function as a diminutive of serpēns (“serpent, snake”), although not directly built on the latter's stem.

• (Classical Latin) IPA^(key): [ˈsɛr.pʊ.ɫa]
• (modern Italianate Ecclesiastical) IPA^(key): [ˈsɛr.pu.la]

serpula f (genitive serpulae); first declension

1. a little snake, a little serpent

First-declension noun.

• “serpula”, in Charlton T. Lewis and Charles Short (1879), A Latin Dictionary, Oxford: Clarendon Press
• “serpula”, in Gaffiot, Félix (1934), Dictionnaire illustré latin-français, Hachette.