plant-animal
Word Rarity
Uncommon
Frequency: 4.55 in modern English
15
Scrabble Score
11
Letters
5
Syllables
7
Unique Chars
Meaning
noun
An organism having characteristics of both plants and animals; a zoophyte, later chiefly an animal with structural resemblances to a plant.
Archaic
Example Sentences
- "From which Description, they [sponges] seem to be a kind of Plant-Animal that adheres to a Rock […]."
- "She had on her slide some special stuff come up from London that day […] she focussed the light on her field, and saw the plant-animal lying shadowy in a boundless light […]."
- "There are some three hundred more of such plant-animals and collectively they represent a group called the Flagellates, which is neither plant nor animal, but intermediate."
Etymology
From plant + animal, after French plant-animal (obsolete), from New Latin plantanimal (16th c.), after Hellenistic Ancient Greek ζωόφυτον (zōóphuton, “zoophyte”).
Origin
- Source language: French
Word Breakdown
- Root: plant-animal, plantanimal, ζωόφυτον