English Dictionary

acephalous

/əˈsɛfələs/

adj

Having no head. / (zoology, applied to bivalve mollusks) Without a distinct head. / (botany) Having the style spring from the base, instead of from the apex, as is the case in certain ovaries

The acephalous statue stood in the center of the square.

意味（1）

Having no head.

[…] Mr. Cruickshank saw a Monster nine Months old, which lived thirty-six Hours after it was born, though it had no Cranium: […] But is this a Reason that we should believe the vital Functions and the Increase of the Body have no dependence on the Brain? I think not: for such acephalous Subjects never live long […]

意味（2）

(zoology, applied to bivalve mollusks) Without a distinct head.

意味（3）

(botany) Having the style spring from the base, instead of from the apex, as is the case in certain ovaries

意味（4）

(social sciences, political science, sociology) A system of society without centralised state authority, where power is welded amongst groups of community entities e.g. clans. Without a leader or chief.

an acephalous society / community

意味（5）

(prosody) Deficient in the beginning, as a line of poetry that is missing its expected opening syllable.

They have acephalous or headless Verses, which commence with a short Syllable instead of a long one:

意味（6）

(of a manuscript) Lacking the first portion of the text.

意味（7）

(rare) Without a beginning.

Men wrote eloquently, because they wrote feelingly: they wrote idiomatically, because they wrote naturally, and without affectation: but if a false or acephalous structure of sentence,—if a barbarous idiom—or an exotic word happened to present itself, no writer of the 17th century seems to have had any such scrupulous sense of the dignity belonging to his own language, as should make it a duty to reject it, or worth his while to re-model a line.