multipede

English

Alternative forms

• multiped

Etymology

From Latin multipeda, multipēs; equivalent to multi- ‎ -pede.

Adjective

multipede (not comparable)

1. Having many feet.

Noun

multipede (plural multipedes)

1. A creature with many feet, especially a centipede, millepede or similar creature.
   • 1742, Charles Owen, An essay towards a natural history of serpents, page 107:

     XLVI. THE Ambua, ſo the Natives of Brazil call the Millepedes and the Centipedes Serpents. […]
     IN theſe Multipedes, the Mechaniſm of the Body is very curious; […]

   • 1804, W. Kochs, Experiments with Artificial Propagation of Minute Crustaceans, published in the Bulletin of the Bureau of Fisheries, volume 14, page 307:

     In the course of two weeks there developed in all the aquaria minute crustaceans (shell insects, flea lobsters, water multipedes, infusoria, green algae), a felted mass […]

   • 1832, William Percivall, The anatomy of the horse, embracing the structure of the foot, page 418:

     Animals exhibit differences in the number of their feet, and accordingly have been distributed into classes, consisting of bipeds, quadrupeds, and multipedes.

2. A branching structure with many separate termini.
   • 2006, Bertrand Donnio, Akira Harada, Akihito Hashidzume, editors, Supramolecular polymers, polymeric betains, oligomers:

     The stability of the mesophases for the polypedes and multipedes is reported in Table 17.

   • 2011, Takashi Nakanishi, Supramolecular Soft Matter: Applications in Materials and Organic Electronics, page 314:

     As noted in Section 15.1, the design of multipedes allows the incorporation of functional moieties into self-assembling and/or self-organizing states of matter.