Phrase guide
Definitions and examples are grouped by meaning. Pronunciation, history, word forms, translations, descendants, synonyms, antonyms, derived terms, and related words appear whenever the source provides them.
Sound
Each Play button uses your device's default local English voice, or a natural local fallback. The selected voice name appears after playback. This is synthesized speech, not a source recording.
No pronunciation record was provided for this word.
noun
The primordial heart in an embryo, appearing as a throbbing point.
Definition source: English Wiktionary via Wiktextract
Usage: historical, uncountable
Topics: biology, natural-sciences
No example sentence was provided for this meaning.
Synonyms: none provided
Antonyms: none provided
noun
Starting point, source; gist.
Definition source: English Wiktionary via Wiktextract
Usage: figuratively, uncountable
No example sentence was provided for this meaning.
Synonyms: bowels, sum, brass tacks, core, crux, essence, gist, drift, guts, gravamen, heart, heart and soul, heartstring, heartstrings, inwardness, kernel, marrow, meat, moral of the story, nitty-gritty, nub, nuts and bolts, pith, punctum saliens, quintessence, soul, spirit, stuff, substance, tenor
Antonyms: none provided
History
Borrowed from Latin punctum saliēns (“leaping point”), attributed to Volcher Coiter or Ulysses Aldrovandi, after a Latin translation of Aristotle's History of Animals (book 6, part 3).
