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Tuesday December 13, 2005

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carapace \KAIR-uh-pace\ , noun:
1. The thick shell that covers the back of the turtle, the crab, and other animals.
2. Something likened to a shell that serves to protect or isolate from external influence.

. . .a gauge for measuring the length of a lobster's carapace from the thorax to the eye socket.
-- Richard Adams Carey, Against the Tide

Hannah Jelkes, . . . who wears an air of cool reserve like a carapace.
-- Howard Taubman, "Theatre: 'Night of the Iguana' Opens", New York Times, December 29, 1961

Desperate to win his father's attention and respect, Kennedy became a hard man for a long while, covering over his sensitivity and capacity for empathy with a carapace of arrogance.
-- Evan Thomas, Robert Kennedy: His Life

Eisenman, who is Meier's second cousin, was so neurotically insecure about his abilities that he sought to hide them within the dense carapace of arcane theory.
-- Martin Filler, "The Spirit of '76", New Republic, July 9, 2001

Almost all the vivid, eyewitness accounts we have . . . date from a quarter of a century later, when Degas, celebrated and successful, had developed a crusty, cantankerous carapace, from which he emerged occasionally to deliver his famously caustic and enigmatic mots.
-- Christopher E. G. Benfey, Degas in New Orleans

Carapace comes from French, from Spanish carapacho, itself of uncertain origin.

Dictionary.com Entry and Pronunciation for carapace

 

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