articulare

Articulare is a Latin adjective meaning "pertaining to joints" or "jointed." In English-language science writing it appears mainly in historical or Latinized forms rather than as a common contemporary term. The word relates to articulation and to the Latin noun articulus, from which modern terms such as articulation, articulate, and articular derive.

In anatomy, articulare has been used to refer to the articular bone (os articulare), a component of the jaw joint in many non-mammalian vertebrates. The typical jaw joint in these species is formed between the dentary and the articular. In mammalian evolution, these bones were repurposed as the auditory ossicles of the middle ear—the malleus and incus—while the jaw joint shifted to the dentary–squamosal articulation.

In botany and plant morphology, articulare describes structures that show distinct joints or nodes—jointed stems or segmentally joined organs—though this usage is mainly within Latin descriptions and not a common contemporary term in English.

Today, articulare survives chiefly in historical texts, Latin phrases, and some taxonomic or descriptive names. It is typically superseded by more precise English terms such as articular, articulated, or jointed, except in contexts that explicitly preserve Latin nomenclature.

See also: articulation, articular bone, jaw joint.