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Lips

   Also found in: Dictionary/thesaurus, Medical, Legal, Acronyms, Idioms, Wikipedia 0.02 sec.
LIPS
(Logical Inferences Per Second) The unit of measurement of the thinking speed of an AI application. Humans do about 2 LIPS. In the computer, one LIPS equals from 100 to 1,000 instructions.
Lips 

(labia). (1)In the majority of gnathostomatous vertebrates, the immobile cutaneous folds that surround the mouth. Lips are absent in tortoises, birds. and adult cloacal mammals. owing to the development of a horny beak on the jaws. A distinction is made between the upper and lower lips. In fish the lips are usually well supplied with gustatory and tactile organs and aid in catching prey. In the majority of amphibians the lips serve to seal the oral cavity during respiration. In reptiles (snakes and lizards) the lips are distinctly expressed and covered externally with horny labial plates. In mammals the lips are mobile, which acquires special significance in adaptation of the young to sucking and of the adult animals to active food capture. Striated musculature develops in the lips. In the elephant, swine, and tapir the upper lip is greatly extended and forms the lower side of the trunk or snout. In cyclostomes the so-called upper lip serves as a sucker. Certain parts of the mouth apparatus are called labia in a number of invertebrates.

In man. the lips are mobile folds that circumscribe the oral cavity anteriorly and are formed of skin and mucous membrane, between which are enclosed the orbicularis oris muscle and the small mimetic muscles. The site of transition from skin to mucous membrane is the vermilion border, which abounds in blood vessels. Sensory innervation of the lips is from the trigeminal nerve.

In anthropology lips are classified according to the thickness, direction, and contour of the upper lip and the width of the mouth opening. Lips are divided, according to thickness, into thin, average, thick, and inflated. The upper lip may protrude (procheilia), have a vertical profile (orthocheilia), or, more rarely, recede (opisthocheilia). The thickest (inflated) lips and procheilia are characteristic of equatorial (Negroid and Australoid) races. Orthocheilia is characteristic of Europoids. The thinnest lips are found in certain peoples of northern Europe and Asia. The upper lip may vary also in contour—concave, straight, or convex. This last is especially characteristic of the pygmies of central Africa and the Semangs (Malacca peninsula). The height and profile of the upper lip, the thickness of the lips, and the width of the mouth vary also with age and sex. Thickness and procheilia diminish with age and sex. Thickness and procheilia diminish with age (after 25 years), while the height of the upper lip and the width of the mouth increase.

REFERENCE

Roginskii, Ia. Ia., and M. G. Levin. Antropologiia, 2nd ed. Moscow, 1963.
(2)Parts of the external sex organs in the females of some mammals and in women are called lips, or labia, and are divided into the greater pudendal lip (labium majus pudendi) and the lesser pudendal lip (labium minus pudendi).


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He forgot his shoes and stared long, till his lips began to move and he murmured, "Ruth.
Bertrade de Montfort did not know how to answer so ridiculous a sophistry; and, truth to tell, she was more than pleased to hear from the lips of Roger de Conde what bored her on the tongues of other men.
She flushed, bent down slightly, and put her cheek to the countess's lips, drew herself up again, and with the same smile fluttering between her lips and her eyes, she gave her hand to Vronsky.
 
 
 
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