receptacle
a container, device, etc., that receives or holds something: a receptacle for trash.
Botany. the modified or expanded portion of the stem or axis that bears the organs of a single flower or the florets of a flower head.
Electricity. a contact device installed at an outlet for the connection of a portable lamp, appliance, or other electric device by means of a plug and flexible cord.
Origin of receptacle
1Words Nearby receptacle
Dictionary.com Unabridged Based on the Random House Unabridged Dictionary, © Random House, Inc. 2024
How to use receptacle in a sentence
Which causes all of the caterpillars to fall out of the hedge and into your receptacles.
Streetlights are making caterpillars grow up faster—and that’s a bad thing | Philip Kiefer | August 25, 2021 | Popular-ScienceIt looks at how people share information, and how sometimes we rely on others as being the information receptacle.
Reports of a Baleful Internet Are Greatly Exaggerated - Issue 104: Harmony | Brian Gallagher | July 21, 2021 | NautilusInventions like the Lapee female urinal, a pink cubicle in which the user squats over an oval-shaped receptacle to relieve herself, can help gather this pure pee.
‘Pipe Dreams’ flushes out hope in an unexpected place: the toilet | Maria Temming | April 6, 2021 | Science NewsThe hotel didn’t have any trash receptacles for the lobby and had to borrow some from a neighboring property that has been closed since the start of the pandemic.
Opening a new hotel is never easy. Try doing it during a pandemic. | Andrea Sachs | March 19, 2021 | Washington PostAlso, some form of trash receptacle would be welcomed, as we were often stumbling around our bag of trash and sticking it beneath the dinette table at night to avoid attracting animals.
An Off-Grid Test of Airstream's Most Rugged Trailer | Hayden Coplen | November 22, 2020 | Outside Online
The average reader, he declares, is but an unwitting receptacle for media narratives.
What is the News? Whatever Alain de Botton Thinks It Is | Robert Herritt | February 20, 2014 | THE DAILY BEASTThefacebook was nothing but a platform—a receptacle for the contributions of its users.
How Mark Zuckerberg's Vision Saved Facebook | David Kirkpatrick | October 12, 2010 | THE DAILY BEASTAs a result, health reform has become a bottomless receptacle for a host of free-floating fears harbored by many Americans.
She was cast into a bare and miserable dungeon, in that subterranean receptacle of woe, where there was not even a bed.
Madame Roland, Makers of History | John S. C. AbbottIn this shallow receptacle lay an oval miniature which the man took out and held under the strong light of the gas jet.
Those Dale Girls | Frank Weston CarruthStrange that he should be thus happy in a receptacle of so much pain and sorrow; yet he was light-hearted as the son of a grandee.
My Ten Years' Imprisonment | Silvio PellicoThe letter f marks a receptacle for water, which seems to have been used for moistening the bread while baking.
The Private Life of the Romans | Harold Whetstone JohnstonIda, awakened by her movements, watched her as she produced a tiny packet from the last-mentioned receptacle.
Alone | Marion Harland
British Dictionary definitions for receptacle
/ (rɪˈsɛptəkəl) /
an object that holds something; container
botany
the enlarged or modified tip of the flower stalk that bears the parts of the flower
the shortened flattened stem bearing the florets of the capitulum of composite flowers such as the daisy
the part of lower plants that bears the reproductive organs or spores
Origin of receptacle
1Collins English Dictionary - Complete & Unabridged 2012 Digital Edition © William Collins Sons & Co. Ltd. 1979, 1986 © HarperCollins Publishers 1998, 2000, 2003, 2005, 2006, 2007, 2009, 2012
Scientific definitions for receptacle
[ rĭ-sĕp′tə-kəl ]
The enlarged upper end of a flower stalk that bears the flower or group of flowers. The fleshy edible part of an apple is actually a modified receptacle. See more at flower.
The American Heritage® Science Dictionary Copyright © 2011. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. All rights reserved.
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