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ENGLISH · A WORD WITH POSSIBILITIES

pilus.

A hair.

5 characters2 syllables approx.English language

Meaning & usage

noun/ˈpaɪ̯.ləs/Canada, General-American, Received-Pronunciation/ˈpʌɪ̯.ləs/Canada, General-American, Received-Pronunciation, also/ˈpɑe̯.ləs/Australia, New-Zealand/ˈpʌi̯.ləs/Scotland

  1. A hair.

  2. A hairlike appendage found on the cell surface of many bacteria.

  3. A bacterial protein that has several biochemical functions.

Where this word comes from

Learned borrowing from Latin pilus (“hair”). Doublet of pile.

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Definitions, grammatical labels, IPA, etymology and examples: Wiktionary contributors, extracted by Kaikki / Wiktextract. Adapted under CC BY-SA 4.0. Selected fields and authored examples are shown; third-party quotations and audio are omitted. See contributor history.

Last enriched 2026-09-10. Definitions are in English. Romanizations are shown when supplied by the source; syllable estimates are omitted for unsupported scripts.