Noun

(en-noun)

A small spark or flash.

* 1890 , Philosophical Magazine , page 364,

If the action of the electrodynamic waves is so violent that, even without artificial electrification of the secondary conductor, scintillæ occur in its spark-gap, the aluminium leaves remain almost without change.

A small or trace amount.

* 1876 February, ,

And, if I except the sagacious remark of General Duane which has been so curtly brushed aside, not a scintilla of light has been cast upon these causes by any researches ever published by the Lighthouse Board of Washington.

* 1878 April, ,

Now, it may be we have no scintilla of proof to the contrary, but reason is unnecessary in reference to that belief which is of all the most settled, which nobody doubts or can doubt, and which he who should deny would stultify himself in so doing.

* 1990 , ,

Current medical practice recommends use of heroic measures if there is a scintilla of a chance that the patient will recover, on the assumption that the measures will be discontinued should the patient improve.

Noun

(en noun)

The mark of the foot left on the earth; a track or footstep; a trace; a sign.

A faint mark or visible sign left by something which is lost, or has perished, or is no longer present; remains.

*

*

*

*

*{{quote-book, year=1944, author=(w)

, title= The Three Corpse Trick, chapter=5 , passage=The hovel stood in the centre of what had once been a vegetable garden, but was now a patch of rank weeds. Surrounding this, almost like a zareba, was an irregular ring of gorse and brambles, an unclaimed vestige of the original common.}}

(label) A vestigial organ; a non-functional organ or body part that was once functional in an evolutionary ancestor.

* 1904 Transactions of theannual session , Volume 40, Homeopathic Medical Society of the State of Pennsylvania, p160

Any person seeing such a condition could not help being frightened at the conditions found, and it seems to me that that fact should lead us to think that the appendix is a vestige or becoming so.

* 1932 (John Arthur Thomson), Riddles of science, Ayer Publishing, p824

Now this paired organ of Jacobsen began in reptiles and is well developed in many mammals. But in man it is a vestige , often disappearing altogether; and the two openings are closed.

* 2007 R. Randal Bollingera, Andrew S. Barbasa, Errol L. Busha, Shu S. Lina, & William Parkera, "Biofilms in the large bowel suggest an apparent function of the human vermiform appendix," Journal of Theoretical Biology

This idea was confirmed by Scott, who performed a detailed comparative analysis of primate anatomy and demonstrated conclusively that the appendix is derived for some unidentified function and is not a vestige .