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funiculus

/fjʊˈnɪk.jəl.əs/noun

funiculus is a noun meaning “Any of several cordlike structures, especially the umbilical cord, or a bundle of nerve fibres (white matter) in the spinal cord. The white matter of…” (English Wiktionary, September 2026). It is spelled F-U-N-I-C-U-L-U-S and has 4 syllables, and it appears about once in every 71 million words in written English (wordfreq, 2021 data). The plural of funiculus is funiculi.

What does funiculus mean?

noun

  1. 1

    Any of several cordlike structures, especially the umbilical cord, or a bundle of nerve fibres (white matter) in the spinal cord. The white matter of the spinal cord is made of (posterior, anterior and lateral) columns/funiculi. The grey columns are also called horns but not funiculi.

  2. 2

    A stalk that connects the seed (or ovule) with the placenta.

    The elaiosome emerges from the funiculus.

Source: English Wiktionary, dump of September 2, 2026 (CC BY-SA 4.0), through kaikki.org (Wiktextract).

How do you pronounce funiculus?

  • UK /fjʊˈnɪk.jʊl.əs/
  • US /fjʊˈnɪk.jəl.əs/
  • US /fəˈnɪk.jəl.əs/

Funiculus 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)-Vealhurl-funiculus.wav, Wikimedia Commons (author and licence on each file's page).

Forms of funiculus

  • funiculi plural

Source: English Wiktionary, dump of September 2, 2026 (CC BY-SA 4.0), through kaikki.org (Wiktextract).

How common is funiculus?

Funiculus appears about once in every 71 million words in written English, the 265,644th 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).

Funiculus in Spanish, French, German and Portuguese

In the sense cordlike structure:

LanguageWords
Frenchfunicule
Spanishfunículo

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 funiculus come from?

From Latin funiculus, diminutive of funis (“rope, cord”) + -culus.

Source: English Wiktionary, dump of September 2, 2026 (CC BY-SA 4.0), through kaikki.org (Wiktextract).