osculum

From Latin ōsculum (“little mouth”).

osculum (plural oscula)

1. (chiefly zoology) A small opening or orifice. [from 18th c.]
2. (zoology, obsolete) One of the suckers on the head of a tapeworm.
3. (zoology) The main opening in a sponge from which water is expelled.
   • 2012, Caspar Henderson, The Book of Barely Imagined Beings, 2013 edition, Granta Books, page 29:

     Waste water was expelled through a single osculum at about 8.5 cm per second – more than eight thousand times as fast as it circulated in the chambers and 85 times as fast as it entered the sponge in the first place.

• lucumos, musculo-

From ōs (“mouth”) +‎ -culum, neuter form of -culus (suffix forming a diminutive).

• (Classical) IPA^(key): /ˈoːs.ku.lum/, [ˈoːs.kʊ.ɫũː]

ōsculum n (genitive ōsculī); second declension

1. a kiss ^syn.
2. a little mouth

Second declension.

• (kiss): ^def. bāsium n, suāvium n

• English: osculum
• French: oscule
• Italian: osculo
• Romanian: uști
• Spanish: ósculo

• ōs

• osculum in Charlton T. Lewis and Charles Short (1879) A Latin Dictionary, Oxford: Clarendon Press
• osculum in Charlton T. Lewis (1891) An Elementary Latin Dictionary, New York: Harper & Brothers
• osculum in Charles du Fresne du Cange’s Glossarium Mediæ et Infimæ Latinitatis (augmented edition, 1883–1887)
• osculum in Gaffiot, Félix (1934) Dictionnaire Illustré Latin-Français, Hachette