globular

UK/ˈɡlɒbjʊlə/US/ˈɡlɑbjəlɚ/

adjectiveC1Very rare — outside the 30,000 commonest English words, so you will meet it in writing rather than in speechmostly writtentechnical · an editor’s judgement

Globular means shaped like a ball. Round in every direction, not just round on the page.

It is a technical word and it keeps technical company: astronomers speak of a globular cluster, a dense ball of ancient stars; chemists of globular proteins, which fold into a rough sphere. Biologists use it for cells and spores. In ordinary description you would say round or spherical, and globular would sound like showing off — its value is that it says ball-shaped without insisting on a perfect sphere, which suits things in nature that are lumpy.

Definitions of globular

1adjectiveglobularShaped roughly like a ball.C1
“The seed head is globular and slightly ridged.”
synonyms: spherical

Where it comes from

Medieval Latin
globulāris
French
globulaire
English, today
globular

From French globulaire or Medieval Latin globulāris.

Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA

Practised in A Man Called Ove

First appears in chapter 38 of A Man Called Ove.

Practise this word

globular in the wild

A globular cluster is a spheroidal conglomeration of stars that is bound together by gravity, with a higher concentration of stars towards its center.
Globular cluster
Globular clusters are occasionally known simply as "globulars".
Globular cluster
Globular clusters, with more members and more mass, remain intact for far longer and the globular clusters observed are usually billions of years old.
Star cluster
Star clusters within the Milky Way that are visible to the naked eye, include the Pleiades and Hyades open clusters, and the globular cluster 47 Tucanae.
Star cluster
In biochemistry, globular proteins or spheroproteins are spherical ("globe-like") proteins and are one of the common protein types (the others being fibrous, disordered and membrane proteins).
Globular protein

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From Wikipedia, CC BY-SA 4.0. These sentences were written by other people about their own subjects; they are here to show the word at work, not as anybody’s opinion.

From Project Gutenberg, public domain. These sentences are from real books, shown to illustrate the word at work.

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