The Collaborative International Dictionary
Lateral \Lat"er*al\, a. [L. lateralis, fr. latus, lateris, side: cf. F. lat['e]ral.]
Of or pertaining to the sides; as, the lateral walls of a house; the lateral branches of a tree.
(Anat.) Lying at, or extending toward, the side; away from the mesial plane; external; -- opposed to mesial.
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Directed to the side; as, a lateral view of a thing.
Lateral cleavage (Crystallog.), cleavage parallel to the lateral planes.
Lateral equation (Math.), an equation of the first degree.
Lateral line (Anat.), in fishes, a line of sensory organs along either side of the body, often marked by a distinct line of color.
Lateral pressure or stress (Mech.), a pressure or stress at right angles to the length, as of a beam or bridge; -- distinguished from longitudinal pressure or stress.
Lateral strength (Mech.), strength which resists a tendency to fracture arising from lateral pressure.
Lateral system (Bridge Building), the system of horizontal braces (as between two vertical trusses) by which lateral stiffness is secured.
Wiktionary
n. A sense organ of a fish running lengthwise down each of its sides from the vicinity of the operculum to the base of the tail, used to detect movement and vibration in the surrounding water.
WordNet
n. sense organs of fish and amphibians; believed to detect pressure changes in the water [syn: lateral line organ]
Wikipedia
The lateral line is a system of sense organs found in aquatic vertebrates used to detect movement and vibration in the surrounding water. The sensory ability is achieved via modified epithelial cells, known as hair cells, which respond to displacement caused by motion and transduce these signals into electrical impulses via excitatory synapses. Lateral lines serve an important role in schooling behavior, predation, and orientation. For example, fish can use their lateral line system to follow the vortices produced by fleeing prey. They are usually visible as faint lines running lengthwise down each side, from the vicinity of the gill covers to the base of the tail. In some species, the receptive organs of the lateral line have been modified to function as electroreceptors, which are organs used to detect electrical impulses, and as such these systems remain closely linked. Most amphibian larvae and some fully aquatic adult amphibians possess mechanosensitive systems comparable to the lateral line.
Usage examples of "lateral line".
Somewhere-sometime in that hot sea as he struggled between the freezing darkness and the burning light and satisfied his compelling hunger by growing into an absorptive cup, a cylinder, a blob with an internal gut, as he extruded fins and nascent flukes and swam erratically after game, and formed eyes to harness the light at last and gills to breathe the water and the lateral line system to navigate by-somewhere during that complex billion-year development that preceded his rise to land the little arths had taken their own mysterious but highly successful course.
For this reason, land vertebrates had to develop sound-receptors more delicate than the fish's lateral line.
The young surface dweller swam well enough and fast enough, but the sahuagin's lateral line, the sensory organ that allowed him to detect vibration and movement in the water, warned him.
Its skin was crusted with stuck-on bits of garbage, and its side was studded with a lateral line of small black eyes trimmed in brilliant blue.
He saw it over the open rear sight of his rifle, saw it beyond the minute pip of the foresight that rode unwaveringly in the centre of the old bull's bulging brow between the eyes, where the crease of skin at the base of its trunk was a deep lateral line.
On the courser's farside, steerage jets that had not existed a moment before were blazing now in sudden, asynchronous fury, a lateral line of fire driving the vessel sideways toward Null Boundary.
It was so vast that Shea could see the lateral line of the horizon where the sky dropped to the parched earth.
She had smiled momentarily as he'd sat down a few feet from her before turning her attention back to The Times crossword puzzle, in which even as he took his first draught she wrote another word, with her left hand, the middle fingernail marked with a broad, white lateral line, as if she might have trapped it in a door.
For instance, the human head can be divided evenly along a lateral line running left to right across the eyes.
The sleek hoods of the loges are an evanescent blue shading along a lateral line to a hue subtle as the bronze tint on a mushroom, lending them an eerily organic look, like hovering skates or devilfish.