Caducous

//kəˈdjuːkəs// adj

adj ·Rare ·Advanced level

Definitions

Adjective
  1. 1
    Of a part of an organism, disappearing in the normal course of development.

    "The Jubulaceae have a leaf whose lobule, usually transformed into a water-sac, is normally very narrowly attached to the stem and to the dorsal lobe; indeed some Frullania taxa reproduce vegetatively by dropping the dorsal lobes, but not the lobules, and Neohattoria has caducous lobules but persistent lobes."

  2. 2
    Tending to fall early.

    "caducous leaves"

Adjective
  1. 1
    shed at an early stage of development wordnet

Synonyms

All synonyms
deciduousshed

Example

More examples

"The Jubulaceae have a leaf whose lobule, usually transformed into a water-sac, is normally very narrowly attached to the stem and to the dorsal lobe; indeed some Frullania taxa reproduce vegetatively by dropping the dorsal lobes, but not the lobules, and Neohattoria has caducous lobules but persistent lobes."

Etymology

Latin cadūcus (“falling; transitory”).

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Data sourced from Wiktionary, WordNet, CMU, and other open linguistic databases. Updated March 2026.