any of various invertebrate animals with a hard shell
adjective
2.
(of an invertebrate) having a hard shell
testacean in American English
(teˈsteiʃən)
adjective
Zoology
having a shell or test
Word origin
[1835–45; ‹ L testāce(us) shell-covered, testaceous + -an]This word is first recorded in the period 1835–45. Other words that entered Englishat around the same time include: cutaway, faceplate, hot plate, placement, protein-an is a suffix occurring originally in adjectives borrowed from Latin, formed from nounsdenoting places (Roman; urban) or persons (Augustan), and now productively forming English adjectives by extension of the Latin pattern.Attached to geographical names, it denotes provenance or membership (American; Chicagoan), the latter sense now extended to membership in social classes, religious denominations,etc., in adjectives formed from various kinds of noun bases (Episcopalian; pedestrian; Puritan; Republican) and membership in zoological taxa (acanthocephalan; crustacean). Attached to personal names, it has the additional senses “contemporary with” (Elizabethan; Jacobean) or “proponent of” (Hegelian; Freudian) the person specified by the noun base. It also occurs in a set of personal nouns,mainly loanwords from French, denoting one who engages in, practices, or works withthe referent of the base noun (comedian; grammarian; historian; theologian)
Examples of 'testacean' in a sentence
testacean
The shell has three layers: cuticle or external, calcareous or intermediate and testacean or internal.
R. Acuña-Mesén, S. Segura -Solís, L. Alvarado, W. Sachsse 2001, 'Ultraestructura de la cáscara de huevos eclosionados y no eclosionados de Kinosternonangustipons (Testudinata: Kinosternidae)', Revista de Biología Tropicalhttp://www.scielo.sa.cr/scielo.php?script=sci_arttext&pid=S0034-77442001000300031. Retrieved from DOAJ CC BY 4.0 (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/legalcode)