The word "cuticle" is correct and usable in written English.
You can use it to refer to the layer of epithelial tissue that covers the surface of a vertebrate animal's nails, claws, and hooves. For example: "I buffed my cuticles to keep them healthy."
"My purpose," he writes, "is to pare back a little the cuticle of time and to apply the research methods I have learnt as a biographer to my own life for a while, letting the detective work show through the narrative at some places for those who have a similar curiosity in human nature and its reworkings on a family chronicle".
Once formed, the insect cuticle cannot grow.
A cuticle may cover the cortex.
Externally, this so-called cortex is covered by a delicate layer of imbricated scales forming the cuticle.
In large, heavy, mostly carnivorous species, the cuticle is highly mineralized or impregnated with calcium salts.
The cast-off cuticle, or exuviae, remains behind.
Roundworms have a thick, flexible cuticle, with three distinguishable zones, covered by an epicuticle.
Modified mechanical sense organs in the cuticle called campaniform organs detect bending strains in the integument.
The seta contains chlorophyll when immature and cannot absorb moisture from the environment because its surface is covered by a water-impermeable layer, the cuticle.
The simple or sometimes much-divided leaves are usually alternately arranged and are often densely covered with hairs or have a thick cuticle, and the stomata in some species are restricted to deep pits with occluded entrances.
Cutin and waxes are fatty substances deposited in the walls of epidermal cells, forming a waterproof outer layer called the cuticle.
