adjective

• 1Shaped like or resembling a breast or nipple.

  More example sentences

  • ‘The grounds in the neighborhood are covered with those common mammillary elevations known as ‘Indian corn-hills.’’

  1. 1.1(of a mineral) having several smoothly rounded convex surfaces.
     ‘Malachite is typically massive, forming thick, compact crusts with mammillary surfaces.’
     More example sentences

     • ‘Pale-to-medium blue mammillary rosasite aggregates occur with malachite in oxidized rock fallen from the north face of the open pit near the decline access drift.’
     • ‘Shell units are tightly packed but separated in the mammillary layer.’
  2. 1.2Anatomy Denoting two rounded bodies in the floor of the hypothalamus in the brain.
     ‘the mamillary bodies’
     More example sentences

     • ‘Especially in these cases, MRI findings with high signal intensity in the thalamus and mammillary bodies can be especially important.’
     • ‘The hippocampus has output to the mamillary bodies and onto the anterior nucleus of the thalamus.’
     • ‘It was bluntly perforated in front of the mamillary bodies with the aid of a catheter.’
     • ‘The hippocampus, fornix, and mamillary bodies have an integral role in memory and learning.’
     • ‘This could, in turn, explain why mammillary body damage seems to preferentially affect memory on spatial tasks.’