n. In Roman antiquity, a bottle with a narrow neck and a body more or less nearly globular in shape, usually made of glass or earthenware, rarely of more valuable materials, and used, like the Greek aryballos, bombylios, etc., for carrying oil for anointing the body and for many other purposes.n. 2. Eccles.: In the Roman Catholic Church, a cruet, regularly made of transparent glass, for holding the wine and water used at the altar. See ama. Also written amula. A vessel for holding the consecrated oil or chrism used in various church rites and at the coronation of kings.n. In the middle ages, a small bottle-shaped flask, often of glass, sometimes of lead, used by travelers, and especially by pilgrims. Sometimes these were used as pilgrims' signs (which see, under pilgrim).n. 4. In anat: The dilated part of the membranous semicircular canals in the ear. The enlargement of a galactophorous duct beneath the areola in the human mammary gland. Also called sinus.n. 5. In botany, a small bladder or flask-shaped organ attached to the roots or immersed leaves of some aquatic plants, as in Utricularia (which see).n. 6. In zoology: In Vermes, a terminal dilatation of the efferent seminal ducts, In Brachiopoda, one of the contractile mammillary processes of the sinuses of the pallial lobes, as in Lingula. In certain ducks, one of the chambers or dilatations of the tracheal tympanum or labyrinth. See tympanum. There may be but one ampulla, or there may be one on each side. [Little used in this sense.] In hydroid polyps, the cavity of a vesicular marginal body connected by a canal with the gastrovascular system. In echinoderms, one of the diverticula of the branched ambulacral canals; a sort of Polian vesicle of the ambulacral suckersn. In Hydrocorallinæ, a pit formed in the cœnenchyma for the reception of gonophores.
