noun

• 1Biology
  A minute body or cell in an organism, especially a red or white cell in the blood of vertebrates.

  ‘It is composed of: red corpuscles, white cells, platelets, and blood plasma.’

  More example sentences

  • ‘For a time, all you can see are blurred shapes swimming around on a glass slide, then suddenly everything becomes clear and you are studying a blood corpuscle or a cancerous cell.’
  • ‘But the result of the treatment can affect the blood corpuscles and may even cause death.’
  • ‘Arterioles have a relatively thick muscular wall in comparison to their luminal diameter; the lumen of the smallest arterioles can accommodate about three to four red blood corpuscles.’
  • ‘There was absolutely no way to cure it and the ill persons didn't show the distinct signs of the other kinds - no overproduction of white blood corpuscles, no attacks of high fever and no spleen tumors at all.’

  1. 1.1historical A minute particle regarded as the basic constituent of matter or light.
     ‘these subparticles at the center of an antimony corpuscle are fluid and volatile’
     More example sentences

     • ‘To explain some of his observations Newton had to argue that the corpuscles of light created waves in the aether.’
     • ‘He argued that matter was composed of corpuscles which themselves were differently built up of different configurations of primary particles.’
     • ‘Boyle reconciled the two aspects of his position by assuming that chemical corpuscles were composed of atoms at a deeper level.’
     • ‘Neither Arago nor any other scientist could demonstrate that light must be either a stream of emitted corpuscles or a wave motion.’
     • ‘He used the term corpuscles to describe the negatively charged particles that we now call electrons.’