mosaic

American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition

1. n. A picture or decorative design made by setting small colored pieces, as of stone or tile, into a surface.
2. n. The process or art of making such pictures or designs.
3. n. A composite picture made of overlapping, usually aerial, photographs.
4. n. Something that resembles a mosaic: a mosaic of testimony from various witnesses.
5. n. Botany A viral disease of plants, resulting in light and dark areas in the leaves, which often become shriveled and dwarfed.
6. n. A photosensitive surface, as in the iconoscope of a television camera.
7. n. Biology An individual exhibiting mosaicism.
8. v. To make by mosaic: mosaic a design on a rosewood box.
9. v. To adorn with or as if with mosaic: mosaic a sidewalk.

Century Dictionary and Cyclopedia

1. Made of small pieces inlaid to form a pattern; also, resembling such inlaid work.
2. n. Mosaic work; inlaid work, especially in hard materials, as distinguished from inlays of wood, ivory, or the like. The most common materials for mosaic are colored stones and glass, pavements and floors being more commonly made of the former. Glass mosaic is composed either of pieces cut from small colored rods which are prepared in a suitable variety of colors and shades, and by means of which pictorial effects can readily be obtained, as in Roman mosaic, or of tesseræ made each by itself, the colors used in this method being fewer and the pieces usually about a quarter of an inch square. The latter variety may be distinguished as Byzantine or Venetian mosaic. Mosaic was a usual decoration among the later Greeks and the Romans, and among the Byzantines and their immediate artistic followers, as at Ravenna and Venice, and in the splendid Norman-Saracenic churches of Sicily, displayed a preeminent excellence of design and magnificence of color. The art has recently been revived, with especial success in Italy and France.
3. n. A piece of mosaic work: as, a Florentine mosaic; a Roman mosaic; a glass mosaic.
4. n. Anything resembling a piece of mosaic work in composition.
5. n. See the adjectives.
6. Relating to Moses, the Hebrew lawgiver, or to the writings and institutions attributed to him.
7. In biology, pertaining to or characterized by the presence of antagonistic or mutually exclusive parental characters in different parts of the body or of the germ-cells.
8. n. In biology, an organism which has antagonistic or mutually exclusive parental characteristics in different parts of its body.
9. To work up into a mosaic; represent in or decorate with mosaic patterns. Also mosaick.

Wiktionary

1. n. A piece of artwork created by placing colored squares (usually tiles) in a pattern so as to create a picture.
2. n. genetics An individual composed of two or more cell lines of different genetic or chromosomal constitution, but from the same zygote.
3. n. botany A viral disease of plants.
4. n. A composite picture made from overlapping photographs.
5. adj. Containing cells with of varying genetic constitution.

GNU Webster's 1913

1. n. (Fine Arts) A surface decoration made by inlaying in patterns small pieces of variously colored glass, stone, or other material; -- called also mosaic work.
2. n. A picture or design made in mosaic; an article decorated in mosaic.
3. n. Something resembling a mosaic{1}; something made up of different pieces, fitted together by design to form a unified composition.
4. adj. Of or pertaining to the style of work called mosaic; formed by uniting pieces of different colors; variegated; tessellated; also, composed of various materials or ingredients.
5. adj. Of or pertaining to Moses, the leader of the Israelites, or established through his agency.

WordNet 3.0

1. adj. of or relating to Moses or the laws and writings attributed to him
2. n. viral disease in solanaceous plants (tomatoes, potatoes, tobacco) resulting in mottling and often shriveling of the leaves
3. n. a freeware browser
4. n. arrangement of aerial photographs forming a composite picture
5. n. transducer formed by the light-sensitive surface on a television camera tube
6. n. art consisting of a design made of small pieces of colored stone or glass
7. n. a pattern resembling a mosaic