acicular
/əˈsɪk.jə.lɚ/adjective
acicular is an adjective meaning “Needle-shaped; slender like a needle or bristle” (English Wiktionary, September 2026). It is spelled A-C-I-C-U-L-A-R and has 4 syllables, and it appears about once in every 32 million words in written English (wordfreq, 2021 data).
What does acicular mean?
adjective
- 1
Needle-shaped; slender like a needle or bristle.
Near-synonyms: needlelike, pinlike
- 2
Having sharp points like needles.
- 3
Of a leaf, slender and pointed, needle-like.
the acicular foliage of coniferous trees
Source: English Wiktionary, dump of September 2, 2026 (CC BY-SA 4.0), through kaikki.org (Wiktextract).
How do you pronounce acicular?
- US /əˈsɪk.jə.lɚ/
Acicular has 4 syllables (counted from the pronunciation).
Source: English Wiktionary, dump of September 2, 2026 (CC BY-SA 4.0), through kaikki.org (Wiktextract). Recordings: LL-Q1860_(eng)-Neøn-acicular.wav, Wikimedia Commons (author and licence on each file's page).
How common is acicular?
Acicular appears about once in every 32 million words in written English, the 173,967th most frequent word form in the list.
Source: written frequency: wordfreq 3.1 (a 2021 snapshot of Wikipedia, subtitles, news, books, web text and social media).
Acicular in Spanish, French, German and Portuguese
In the sense needle-shaped:
| Language | Words |
|---|---|
| French | aciculaire |
| Portuguese | acicular |
Source: English Wiktionary, dump of September 2, 2026 (CC BY-SA 4.0), through kaikki.org (Wiktextract). Translations are Wiktionary's, by sense; a linked word has its own PlainSpell page.
Where does acicular come from?
Borrowed from Latin aciculāris.
Source: English Wiktionary, dump of September 2, 2026 (CC BY-SA 4.0), through kaikki.org (Wiktextract).