lichen

Borrowed from Latin līchēn (“ringworm”), from Ancient Greek λειχήν (leikhḗn).

• enPR: lī'kən, IPA^(key): /ˈlaɪ.kn̩/[1][2][3]
• (also, especially in the UK) IPA^(key): /ˈlɪtʃ.n̩/[1][2][3]

• Audio (UK)

  (file)

• Rhymes: -aɪkən, -ɪtʃən
• Homophone: liken

lichen (countable and uncountable, plural lichens or lichen)

1. Any of many symbiotic organisms, being associations of algae and fungi, often found as white or yellow patches on old walls, etc.
   • 1894 May, Rudyard Kipling, “Lukannon”, in The Jungle Book, London; New York, N.Y.: Macmillan and Co., published June 1894, OCLC 752934375, page 122:

     The Beaches of Lukannon–the winter wheat so tall, / The dripping, crinkled lichens, and the sea-fog drenching all!

   • 1895, H. G. Wells, The Time Machine, ch XI

     It was the same rich green that one sees on forest moss or on the lichen in caves: plants which like these grow in a perpetual twilight.

   • 1915, John Muir, Travels in Alaska, ch V

     The nibble marks of the stone adze were still visible, though crusted over with scale lichens in most places.

2. (figuratively) Something which gradually spreads across something else, causing damage.

   Synonym: cancer

   • 1912 January, Zane Grey, “Shadows on the Sage-slope”, in Riders of the Purple Sage: A Novel, New York, N.Y.; London: Harper & Brothers Publishers, OCLC 6868219, page 202:

     Meanwhile, abiding a day of judgment, she fought ceaselessly to deny the bitter drops in her cup, to tear back the slow, the intangibly slow growth of a hot, corrosive lichen eating into her heart.

• (symbiotic organism): macrolichen, microlichen

• lichen on Wikipedia.Wikipedia
• algae
• fungus
• Iceland moss
• moss
• reindeer moss

Borrowed from Latin lichen, from Ancient Greek λειχήν (leikhḗn).

• IPA^(key): /li.kɛn/

• Audio

  (file)

lichen m (plural lichens)

1. lichen

• lichénique

• “lichen” in le Trésor de la langue française informatisé (The Digitized Treasury of the French Language).

• chelin

Borrowed from Ancient Greek λειχήν (leikhḗn).

• (Classical) IPA^(key): /ˈliː.kʰeːn/

līchēn m (genitive līchēnos or līchēnis); third declension

1. (literally) a cryptogamic species of vegetation growing on trees, lichen
2. (transferred sense, medicine) an eruption on the skin of men and beasts, a tetter, ringworm
   1. (and especially) a callous excrescence upon the leg of a horse, used as a medicine

Third-declension noun (Greek-type, normal variant or non-Greek-type).

• līchēnifōrmis

• līchēna
• līchēnicos

• English: lichen
• French: lichen
• Galician: lique
• Portuguese: líquen
• Spanish: liquen

• līchēn in Charlton T. Lewis and Charles Short (1879) A Latin Dictionary, Oxford: Clarendon Press
• līchēn in Gaffiot, Félix (1934) Dictionnaire Illustré Latin-Français, Hachette, page 909/3
• “līchēn” on page 1,029/1 of the Oxford Latin Dictionary (1st ed., 1968–82)