A very small cilium or hair-like structure on a cell, smaller than a regular cilium.
From Latin 'cilium' (eyelash) with the diminutive suffix '-ola' meaning 'small.' This scientific term was coined to distinguish between larger cilia and these finer cellular appendages.
Think of cilia as eyelashes and ciliola as the tiny baby hairs between them—it's all about scale in the microscopic world, and naming things by size helps scientists communicate exactly what they're looking at.
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