Lexic.us

Definition of Muscle

1. Noun. One of the contractile organs of the body.

2. Verb. Make one's way by force. "He muscled his way into the office"

3. Noun. Animal tissue consisting predominantly of contractile cells.

4. Noun. A bully employed as a thug or bodyguard. "The drug lord had his muscleman to protect him"

5. Noun. Authority or power or force (especially when used in a coercive way). "The senators used their muscle to get the party leader to resign"

6. Noun. Possessing muscular strength.

Definition of Muscle

1. n. An organ which, by its contraction, produces motion.

Definition of Muscle

1. Noun. A contractile form of tissue which animals use to effect movement. ¹

2. Noun. An organ composed of muscle tissue. ¹

3. Noun. (context: uncountable figuratively) Strength. ¹

4. Noun. Hired strongmen or bodyguards. ¹

5. Verb. To use force to make progress, especially physical force. ¹

¹ Source: wiktionary.com

Definition of Muscle

1. to proceed by force [v -CLED, -CLING, -CLES]

Medical Definition of Muscle

1. Tissue specialised for contraction. See twitch muscle, catch muscle: Cardiac muscle (heart muscle) is a striated but involuntary muscle responsible for the pumping activity of the vertebrate heart. The individual muscle cells are joined through a junctional complex known as the intercalated disc and are not fused together into multinucleate structures as they are in skeletal muscle. Skeletal muscle is a rather non-specific term usually applied to the striated muscle of vertebrates that is under voluntary control. The muscle fibres are syncytial and contain myofibrils, tandem arrays of sarcomeres. Smooth muscle is muscle tissue in vertebrates made up from long tapering cells that may be anything from 20-500m long. Smooth muscle is generally involuntary and differs from striated muscle in the much higher actin/myosin ratio, the absence of conspicuous sarcomeres and the ability to contract to a much smaller fraction of its resting length. Smooth muscle cells are found particularly in blood vessel walls, surrounding the intestine (especially the gizzard in birds) and in the uterus. The contractile system and its control resemble those of motile tissue cells (for example fibroblasts, leucocytes) and antibodies against smooth muscle myosin will cross react with myosin from tissue cells, whereas antibodies against skeletal muscle myosin will not. See: dense bodies. This entry appears with permission from the Dictionary of Cell and Molecular Biology (11 Mar 2008)

Lexicographical Neighbors of Muscle

muscat grape muscatel muscatels muscats muschelkalk musci muscicapine muscicide muscicolous muscid

muscids musciform muscimol muscine muscle (current term) muscle-bound muscle-builder muscle-tendon attachment muscle-tendon junction muscle-trimming

muscle-up muscle-ups muscle Marys muscle biopsy muscle boys muscle builder

Literary usage of Muscle

Below you will find example usage of this term as found in modern and/or classical literature:

1. Science by American Association for the Advancement of Science (1917)
"that the muscle has been paralyzed by the division of all of its nerve supply. In all of the experiments, unless otherwise stated, the central connection of ..."

2. Proceedings of the Society for Experimental Biology and Medicine (1903)
"Neurogenic contractions in muscle strips from the body of the esophagus are more sensitive to reduction of calcium in the bathing medium than are both the ..."

3. The Encyclopedia Americana: A Library of Universal Knowledge (1919)
"The muscle- sense is of much importance in imparting information concerning the ... The muscle-sense is all- important in maintaining bodily equilibrium. ..."

4. Microscopical Morphology of the Animal Body in Health and Disease by Carl Heitzmann (1882)
"muscle, the motor apparatus proper, is a formation of living matter in a ... The points of intersection in smooth muscle • are irregularly scattered; ..."

5. Anatomy, Descriptive and Surgical by Henry Gray (1901)
"THE TRANSVERSA LIS muscle. of the external abdominal ring and in front of the conjoined tendon, and interlaces with the ligament of the other side at the ..."

6. Nature by Norman Lockyer (1878)
"From this it necessarily follows that a much larger proportion than one-fifth of the work yielded by chemical force in the muscle itself can be employed in ..."

7. Science by American Association for the Advancement of Science (1905)
"He adds: 'Under suitable conditions the occurrence of active contractions in an excised muscle is not accompanied by an increase in the rate at which carbon ..."

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