RUDIMENT

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 Dictionary entry overview: What does rudiment mean? 

• RUDIMENT (noun)
  The noun RUDIMENT has 1 sense:

1. the remains of a body part that was functional at an earlier stage of life

  Familiarity information: RUDIMENT used as a noun is very rare.

 Dictionary entry details 

• RUDIMENT (noun)

Sense 1

Meaning:

The remains of a body part that was functional at an earlier stage of life

Classified under:

Nouns denoting body parts

Context example:

Meckel's diverticulum is the rudiment of the embryonic yolk sac

Hypernyms ("rudiment" is a kind of...):

body part (any part of an organism such as an organ or extremity)

Derivation:

rudimentary (being in the earliest stages of development)

rudimentary (not fully developed in mature animals)

 Context examples 

But I, who had more experience, could plainly observe some rudiments of it among the wild Yahoos.

(Gulliver's Travels into several remote nations of the world, by Jonathan Swift)

This gave me an idea, or the rudiment of one. I must watch how he gets rid of his spiders.

(Dracula, by Bram Stoker)

But the hindrance thrown in the way of a very speedy intimacy, by the frequent want of one or more of these requisites, prevented their doing more than going through the first rudiments of an acquaintance, by informing themselves how well the other liked Bath, how much she admired its buildings and surrounding country, whether she drew, or played, or sang, and whether she was fond of riding on horseback.

(Northanger Abbey, by Jane Austen)

It was about studies and lessons, dealing with the rudiments of knowledge, and the schoolboyish tone of it conflicted with the big things that were stirring in him—with the grip upon life that was even then crooking his fingers like eagle's talons, with the cosmic thrills that made him ache, and with the inchoate consciousness of mastery of it all.

(Martin Eden, by Jack London)

“That comes—as you call it—of being arrant asses,” retorted the doctor, “and not having sense enough to know honest air from poison, and the dry land from a vile, pestiferous slough. I think it most probable—though of course it's only an opinion—that you'll all have the deuce to pay before you get that malaria out of your systems. Camp in a bog, would you? Silver, I'm surprised at you. You're less of a fool than many, take you all round; but you don't appear to me to have the rudiments of a notion of the rules of health.

(Treasure Island, by Robert Louis Stevenson)

One day, in discourse, my master, having heard me mention the nobility of my country, was pleased to make me a compliment which I could not pretend to deserve: that he was sure I must have been born of some noble family, because I far exceeded in shape, colour, and cleanliness, all the Yahoos of his nation, although I seemed to fail in strength and agility, which must be imputed to my different way of living from those other brutes; and besides I was not only endowed with the faculty of speech, but likewise with some rudiments of reason, to a degree that, with all his acquaintance, I passed for a prodigy.

(Gulliver's Travels into several remote nations of the world, by Jonathan Swift)

Upon these, and the like reasonings, their opinion is, that parents are the last of all others to be trusted with the education of their own children; and therefore they have in every town public nurseries, where all parents, except cottagers and labourers, are obliged to send their infants of both sexes to be reared and educated, when they come to the age of twenty moons, at which time they are supposed to have some rudiments of docility.

(Gulliver's Travels into several remote nations of the world, by Jonathan Swift)

Perhaps my master might refine a little in these speculations, which he had drawn from what he observed himself, or had been told him by others; however, I could not reflect without some amazement, and much sorrow, that the rudiments of lewdness, coquetry, censure, and scandal, should have place by instinct in womankind.

(Gulliver's Travels into several remote nations of the world, by Jonathan Swift)

After a short silence, he told me, he did not know how I would take what he was going to say: that in the last general assembly, when the affair of the Yahoos was entered upon, the representatives had taken offence at his keeping a Yahoo (meaning myself) in his family, more like a Houyhnhnm than a brute animal; that he was known frequently to converse with me, as if he could receive some advantage or pleasure in my company; that such a practice was not agreeable to reason or nature, or a thing ever heard of before among them; the assembly did therefore exhort him either to employ me like the rest of my species, or command me to swim back to the place whence I came: that the first of these expedients was utterly rejected by all the Houyhnhnms who had ever seen me at his house or their own; for they alleged, that because I had some rudiments of reason, added to the natural pravity of those animals, it was to be feared I might be able to seduce them into the woody and mountainous parts of the country, and bring them in troops by night to destroy the Houyhnhnms’ cattle, as being naturally of the ravenous kind, and averse from labour.

(Gulliver's Travels into several remote nations of the world, by Jonathan Swift)