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-

• ausculum

From ōs (“mouth”) +‎ -culum (diminutive suffix).

• (Classical) IPA^(key): /ˈoːs.ku.lum/, [ˈoːs̠kʊɫ̪ʊ̃ˑ]
• (Ecclesiastical) IPA^(key): /ˈos.ku.lum/, [ˈɔskulum]

ōsculum n (genitive ōsculī); second declension

1. a kiss
   • 8 CE, Ovid, Fasti 3.509:

     occupat amplexū lacrimāsque per ōscula siccat

     He holds her in loving embraces, and her tears he dries through kisses.
     (Ariadne and her husband Dionysus reconcile following his infidelity to her.)

2. a little mouth

Second-declension noun (neuter).

• (kiss): bāsium n, suāvium n

• → English: osculum
• → French: oscule
• → Italian: osculo
• Romanian: uști
• → Portuguese: ósculo
• → 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 with additions by D. P. Carpenterius, Adelungius and others, edited by Léopold Favre, 1883–1887)
• osculum in Gaffiot, Félix (1934) Dictionnaire illustré latin-français, Hachette