exuvium

Perhaps from Latin exuvium, or perhaps an independent back-formation from exuvia, under the impression that exuvia is the plural of a Latin second-declension neuter noun exuvium, whereas exuvia is in reality the regularised first-declension singular of Latin exuviae.

exuvium (plural exuvia or exuviums)

1. (biology) Synonym of exuviae
   • 1654 Simeon Ashe

     Loe here th' exuvium of that heavenly soul,
     Who living did by's words and works controule
     The power of Sin and Satan ; and whose breath
     Redeem'd poor souls from darkness, and from death,
     And by bis pious Doctrine did convince
     The sly Temptations of that ayery Prince.

   • 1671 Basil Valentinus, monke of the order of St Bennet: The last will and testament

     Things inclining to ashes, and soot, and excrements of metals, and the exuviums or mulls of bodies Melters suppose may be taken and gotten off safely in a roasting or calcining fire, they make a great fire of wood under them, roast or calcine the metal...
     ...
     Of ‘’Ignis candens’’, or of the glowing fire
     This fire is purposely ordered upon metalline bodies, it consumeth them, being their matter is naturally inclined thereunto: This fire is of great concernment, making their bodies very malleable, their exuvium’s stay on the Float, and is the best quality they have, that they put off in that glowing the thing which will be gone, and the good thereof remains.

   • 1679 Sir Thomas Browne in a letter to his son Edward

     I have sent you by Mrs. Alice Peirce, a skinne of the palme of a woemans hand, cast of at the end of a fever, or in the declination thereof; I called it exuvium palmæ muliebris, the Latin word being exuvia in the plurall, butt I named it exuvium, or exuvia in the singular number.

   • 1860 John Harper "Glimpses of Ocean Life:

     This gentleman, we learn, kept a crayfish alive in a vase for two years, and found that during each year its exuvium was shed but once.

   • 1939 Paul Random Henson et al.: US Dept. of Agriculture. Technical Bulletin 715 Alfalfa Experiments at Stoneville, Miss.

     Meconium and exuvium contained within host skin, which remains nearly intact within host puparium except when destroyed by unusual circumstances

   • 2012 David Rosen, P. DeBach: Species of Aphytis of the World

     The cephalic exuvium, including the antennal cases, and the thoracic exuvium, including the leg and wing cases, are rather strongly sclerotized and are usually recognizable after emergence ...

Perhaps an alternative form of, or parallel formation from, exuviae.

exuvium n (genitive exuviī); second declension

1. Synonym of exuviae
   • Erasmus, Adagia :

     Si leonis exuvium non sufficit, adde vulpinum.

     If the skin of a lion does not suffice, sew on that of a fox.

   • 1752, Robert Ainsworth, Thesaurus Linguae Latinae Compendiarius:

     "The casting of a deer's head, Cornuum cervinorum exuvium

     (please add an English translation of this quotation)

Second-declension noun (neuter).

• exuvium in Gaffiot, Félix (1934) Dictionnaire illustré latin-français, Hachette.