noun
: muscle tissue made up of elongated multinucleate fibers enclosed in a delicate sarcolemma and marked by transverse dark and light bands that presumably indicate differing physical or chemical states of the cytoplasm, the fibers in vertebrates being bound together by a perimysium to form the muscles that clothe the skeleton of a vertebrate and are the organs productive of voluntary activity, and in arthropods forming all or most of the musculature