Seta

//ˈsiːtə// noun

noun ·Uncommon ·Advanced level

Definitions

Noun
  1. 1
    A bristle or hair.

    "The setal arrangement in Puncia therefore could represent an evolutionary intermediate step appropriate to a wide-gaped ostracod, in which a domiciliar 'early warning' system is afforded by the frill and extremely long setae."

  2. 2
    a stiff hair or bristle wordnet
  3. 3
    The stalk of a moss sporangium, or occasionally in a liverwort.

    "The latter has the sporophyte seta 4 cells in diam. and has thecal Lejeunea-type androecial branches[…]"

  4. 4
    stalk of a moss capsule wordnet

Example

More examples

"The setal arrangement in Puncia therefore could represent an evolutionary intermediate step appropriate to a wide-gaped ostracod, in which a domiciliar 'early warning' system is afforded by the frill and extremely long setae."

Etymology

From Latin seta, from saeta. Doublet of soy (“silk”).

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