Emily Dickinson Lexicon

ECH-I'NUS, n. [L. from Gr. εχινος.]

1. A hedgehog.
2. A shellfish set with prickles or spines. The Echinus, in natural history, forms a genus of Mollusca. The body is roundish, covered with a bony crust, and often beset with movable prickles. There are several species, and some of them eatable. Encyc.
3. With botanists, a prickly head or top of a plant; an echinated pericarp.
4. In architecture, a member or ornament near the bottom of Ionic, Corinthian or Composite capitals, so named from its roughness, resembling in some measure, the spiny coat of a hedgehog. Johnson. Encyc.