noun ·Rare ·Advanced level

Definitions

Noun

1. 1
   A hair.
2. 2
   hairlike structure especially on the surface of a cell or microorganism wordnet
3. 3
   A hairlike appendage found on the cell surface of many bacteria.
4. 4
   any of the cylindrical filaments characteristically growing from the epidermis of a mammal wordnet
5. 5
   A bacterial protein that has several biochemical functions.

Synonyms

All synonyms

fimbriafimbriahairhair

Etymology

Borrowed from Latin pilus (“hair”). Doublet of pile.

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