bidental

Etymology

Definitions

1. 1

   Having only two teeth.

2. 2

   articulated with both the upper and lower teeth.

   • The convention for transcribing bidental fricatives, suggested in the expIPA chart, uses the appropriate glottal fricative symbol with a dental diacritic both above and below the symbol.
3. 3

   An organism that has only two teeth, especially a dinosaur of the infraorder Dicynodontia.

   • That these Bidentals, as Mr. Owen more comprehensively calls them, are amongst the earliest reptiles, has been somewhat rashly assumed.
   • It was in this area, as well, that he found, among other creatures, his first Dicynodon, one of those famous mammal-like reptiles that he called bidentals because they had only two tusks in the upper jaw and no teeth.
4. ›+ 1 more definitionshow fewer

   1. 4

      In Ancient Rome, a place that had been struck by lightning and consecrated and enclosed.

      • The bidental was a place that had been struck with lightning, and afterwards expiated by the erection of an altar and the sacrifice of sheep, hostiis bidentibus; from which last circumstance it took its name.
      • The bidental is one of the more problematic structures of the colony and no consensus has yet emerged as to its date.

The neighborhood