The Collaborative International Dictionary
Squamose \Squa*mose"\ (skw[.a]*m[=o]s" or skw[=a]"m[=o]s`), Squamous \Squa"mous\ (skw[=a]"m[u^]s), a. [L. squamosus, fr. squama a scale: cf. F. squameux.]
Covered with, or consisting of, scales; resembling a scale; scaly; as, the squamose cones of the pine; squamous epithelial cells; the squamous portion of the temporal bone, which is so called from a fancied resemblance to a scale.
(Anat.) Of or pertaining to the squamosal bone; squamosal.
Douglas Harper's Etymology Dictionary
1540s, from Latin squamosus "covered with scales, scaly," from squama "scale," perhaps related to squalus "foul, filthy" (see squalid). Middle English had squame "a scale" (late 14c.), from Old French esquame, from Latin squama. Alternative form squamose attested from 1660s.
Wiktionary
a. 1 Covered with, made of, or resembling scales; scaly. 2 (context anatomy English) Of or pertaining to the squamosal bone; squamosal
WordNet
Wikipedia
Usage examples of "squamous".
In a cloth on a bench opposite were rolled up a portion of the malar bone, some fragments of the os frontis, one entire right parietal bone, detached from its fellow along the sagittel suture, and from the occipital along the lambdoidal suture, perhaps taking with it some of the occipital bone together with some of the squamous portion of the temporal bone.
I might call it gigantic - tentacled - proboscidian - octopus-eyed - semi-amorphous - plastic - partly squamous and partly rugose - ugh!
Under these squamous palm trees Laurel kicked Hardy and Woolsey beat Wheeler upon the head with a codfish.
Basal and squamous cell are very curable cancers that are usually treated by removal of the cancerous growth.
In a cloth on a bench opposite were rolled up a portion of the malar bone, some fragments of the os frontis, one entire right parietal bone, detached from its fellow along the sagittel suture, and from the occipital along the lambdoidal suture, perhaps taking with it some of the occipital bone together with some of the squamous portion of the temporal bone.
Even the pallid light shed by the nodule that dangled, like a third eye, from the front of its platycephalic skull threw no more than a firefly sheen on the stretched, squamous green of its hide.
You will ask them how in the name of all that's holy they can expect anything but a gang of crooks in office, and thank the stars and the mercy of heaven that a number of these public officials are honest statesmen despite the fact that the ladies of the East Squamous Community Church obviously don't give a hoot what happens to the country their ancestors and sons died to protect.
Squamous river fish, phytivorous birds of long wings, rapacious beasts of the cat-kind—anyway, as I drew up all of these lists and tables, it occurred to me that (going back to Genesis, sixth chapter, verses fifteen through twenty-two) Noah must have found a way to fit all of these creatures into one gopher-wood tub three hundred cubits long!
Her fingers were so very slim and silken dry, so very strong and many, all starting to grip tightlythey were not fingers but wiry black vines rooted inside her skull, growing in profusion out of her cavernous orbits, gushing luxuriantly out of the triangular hole between the nasal and the vomer bones, twining in tendrils from under her upper teeth so white, pushing insidiously and insistently, like grass from a sidewalk crack, out of her pale brown cranium, bursting apart the squamous, sagittal, and coronal sutures.