Definitions

from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 5th Edition.

  • noun A picture or decorative design made by setting small colored pieces, as of stone or tile, into a surface.
  • noun The process or art of making such pictures or designs.
  • noun A composite picture made of overlapping, usually aerial, photographs.
  • noun Something that resembles a mosaic.
  • noun Botany A viral disease of plants, resulting in light and dark areas in the leaves, which often become shriveled and dwarfed.
  • noun An array of photosensitive elements in a video camera that react to light and are scanned by other components to compose an image.
  • noun Biology An individual exhibiting mosaicism.
  • transitive verb To make by mosaic.
  • transitive verb To adorn with or as if with mosaic.

from The Century Dictionary.

  • Relating to Moses, the Hebrew lawgiver, or to the writings and institutions attributed to him.
  • Made of small pieces inlaid to form a pattern; also, resembling such inlaid work.
  • noun Mosaic work; inlaid work, especially in hard materials, as distinguished from inlays of wood, ivory, or the like.
  • noun A piece of mosaic work: as, a Florentine mosaic; a Roman mosaic; a glass mosaic.
  • noun Anything resembling a piece of mosaic work in composition.
  • noun See the adjectives.
  • 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.
  • noun In biology, an organism which has antagonistic or mutually exclusive parental characteristics in different parts of its body.
  • To work up into a mosaic; represent in or decorate with mosaic patterns. Also mosaick.

from the GNU version of the Collaborative International Dictionary of English.

  • adjective Of or pertaining to Moses, the leader of the Israelites, or established through his agency.
  • adjective 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.
  • adjective See under Florentine.
  • adjective Stannic sulphide, SnS2, obtained as a yellow scaly crystalline powder, and used as a pigment in bronzing and gilding wood and metal work. It was called by the alchemists aurum musivum, or aurum mosaicum. Called also bronze powder.
  • adjective See Mosaic, n.
  • noun (Fine Arts) A surface decoration made by inlaying in patterns small pieces of variously colored glass, stone, or other material; -- called also mosaic work.
  • noun A picture or design made in mosaic; an article decorated in mosaic.
  • noun Something resembling a mosaic{1}; something made up of different pieces, fitted together by design to form a unified composition.
  • noun An aerial photograph of a large area, made by carefully fitting together aerial photographs of smaller areas so that the edges match in location, and the whole provides a continuous image of the larger area. Called also mosaic map and photomosaic.
  • noun A type of plant virus that causes green and yellow mottling of leaves of a plant. A much-studied type is the tobacco mosaic virus, affecting the tobacco plant.

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License.

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

from WordNet 3.0 Copyright 2006 by Princeton University. All rights reserved.

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

Etymologies

from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 4th Edition

[Middle English musycke, from Old French mosaique, from Old Italian mosaico, from Medieval Latin mūsāicum, neuter of mūsāicus, of the Muses, from Latin Mūsa, Muse, from Greek Mousa; see men- in Indo-European roots.]

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License

From Middle French mosaïque, from Italian mosaico, from Medieval Latin musaicum, from Late Latin|musivum|musivum (opus)|lang=la}}, from Latin museum, musaeum, probably from Ancient Greek Μουσεῖον (Mouseîon), shrine of the Muses (Μοῦσα (Moûsa)).

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Examples

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  • as in "of or relating to Moses," not a design made of small pieces of stone or glass.

    October 3, 2008

  • That's a wonderful illustration, a.

    January 5, 2011