lichen

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“
Others are symbiotic, such as lichen, which is a combination of fungus and a green alga or a cyanobacterium.

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Definitions (14)

Toggle American Heritage definitions American Heritage Dictionary (3)

  1. noun A fungus, usually of the class Ascomycetes, that grows symbiotically with algae, resulting in a composite organism that characteristically forms a crustlike or branching growth on rocks or tree trunks.
  2. noun Pathology Any of various skin diseases characterized by patchy eruptions of small, firm papules.
  3. transitive verb To cover with lichens.

Toggle Century definitions Century Dictionary (8)

Toggle GNU Webster definitions GNU Webster's 1913 (1)

Toggle WordNet definitions WordNet (2)

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Examples (50)

  • She rubbed her fingers together, smelled its dust: imagining the rich scent of topsoil the lichen was building, molecule by molecule. —  Asimov's Science Fiction [2001.04]
  • Gray-green lichen grew over the granite sarcophagi, but on the ones of marble or limestone, the lichen was red-orange, like splatters of dried blood. —  Asimov's SF, July 2007
  • So let's talk about synthesis issues for a minute On Shaking and Baking and Synthesis A few years back I saw a paper trumpeting the synthesis of some intricate organic compound heretofore known only in an obscure organism—a lichen, as I recall. —  AnalogSFF,October2007
  • There's a bare space, maybe half a hectare in all, where everything except a kind of lichen has been killed off by the retros of incoming and departing shuttles. —  FSF,August2004
  • Others are symbiotic, such as lichen, which is a combination of fungus and a green alga or a cyanobacterium. —  deseretnews.com - Top Stories
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Etymologies (3)

Toggle American Heritage etymologies American Heritage Dictionary (1)

  1. Latin līchēn, a kind of plant, from Greek leikhēn, from leikhein, to lick; see leigh- in Indo-European roots.

Toggle Century etymologies Century Dictionary (2)

  1. = F. Provencal lichen = Spanish liquen = Portuguese lichen = Italian lichene, from Latin lichen, from Greek λειχήν, also λιχήν, a tree-moss, lichen, also a kind of liverwort, also an eruption on the skin, ringworm, tetter, perhaps from λείχειν, lick.
  2. lichen, n.
 

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/ˈlaɪkɛn/
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