Nummular
adj ·Rare ·Advanced level
Definitions
- 1 Of or relating to coins or money. obsolete, rare
- 2 Flattened with a rounded form, as a disc; coin-shaped.; Characterized by lesions (especially on the cornea or skin) which are round with well-defined borders. broadly
- 3 Flattened with a rounded form, as a disc; coin-shaped.; Of sputum: forming flat, round shapes (formerly thought to be a symptom of tuberculosis). broadly, obsolete
"NUMMULAR […] An epithet applied to the sputa in phthisis, when they flatten at the bottom of the vessel, like a piece of money."
Example
More examples"NUMMULAR […] An epithet applied to the sputa in phthisis, when they flatten at the bottom of the vessel, like a piece of money."
Etymology
From Latin nummulus (“(small amount of) money”) + English -ar (suffix forming adjectives with the sense ‘of, pertaining to, or near’). Nummulus is the diminutive of nummus (“a coin; piece of money”) + -ulus (diminutive suffix); while nummus is from Doric Greek νοῦμμος (noûmmos), from Ancient Greek νόμος (nómos, “kind of coin”), from νέμω (némō, “to deal out, dispense, distribute”) (from Proto-Indo-European *nem- (“to distribute; to give; to take”)) + -ος (-os, suffix forming nouns).
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Data sourced from Wiktionary, WordNet, CMU, and other open linguistic databases. Updated March 2026.