ves´sel|like´

ves|sel «VEHS uhl», noun.

1. a) any large boat; ship, especially one larger than a canoe or rowboat, designed or equipped for conveying passengers and cargo: »

Ocean liners and other vessels are usually docked by tugboats.

b) Law. any floating structure.

2. = airship. (Cf. ↑airship)

3. a hollow holder or container. Cups, bowls, pitchers, bottles, barrels, and tubs are vessels.

4. a tube carrying blood, lymph, or other fluid in the body. Veins and arteries are blood vessels.

5. Botany. a) one of the rows or chains of cells, an essential element of the xylem of plants, that have lost their intervening partitions and have become a long continuous canal permitting the passage of water and dissolved minerals; trachea or duct. b) = pericarp. (Cf. ↑pericarp)

6. Figurative. a person regarded as a container of some quality or as made for some purpose (used chiefly in Biblical expressions): »

a vessel of wrath, the weaker vessel.

╂[< Old French vessel < Latin vascella, plural (taken as feminine singular) of vascellum (diminutive) < vās, vāsis vessel]

–ves´sel|like´, adjective.