a Latin term, properly signifying the keel of a ship; or that long piece of timber running along the bottom of the ship from head to stern, upon which the whole structure is built or framed.

CARINA is also frequently used for the whole capacity or bulk of a ship; containing the hull or all the space below the deck. Hence the word is also sometimes used by a figure for the whole ship.

CARINA is also used in the ancient architecture. The Romans gave the name carina to all buildings in form of a ship, as we still give the name nave to the middle or principal vault of our Gothic churches; because it has that figure.

among anatomists, is used to denote the spina dorsi; as likewise for the fibrous rudiments or embryo of a chick appearing in an incubated egg. The carina consists of the entire vertebrae, as they appear after ten or twelve days incubation. It is thus called, because crooked in form of the keel of a ship.—Botanists also, for the like reason, use the word carina to express the lower petalum of a papilionaceous flower.

CARINE were also weepers, or women hired among the ancient Romans, to weep at funerals: they were thus called from Caria, the country whence most of them came.