spearlet
nounEtymology From spear + -let.
1
A small spear.
- While the poisonous spearlets are now directed largely against rival males, the trait could well have served among ancestral monotremes as the equivalent of a bee’s sting, to ward off the Bigfeet that ever threatened to crush them.2008 May 13, Natalie Angier, “A Gene Map for the Cute Side of the Family”, in New York Times: