Dictionary

plant-animal en · NOUN

Etymology

From plant + animal, after French plant-animal (obsolete), from New Latin plantanimal (16th c.), after Hellenistic Ancient Greek ζωόφυτον (zōóphuton, “zoophyte”).

Meanings

1. (archaic) An organism having characteristics of both plants and animals; a zoophyte, later chiefly an animal with structural resemblances to a plant.
   • 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 […]. 1915, DH Lawrence, The Rainbow, Vintage, published 2011, page 408:
   • From which Description, they [sponges] seem to be a kind of Plant-Animal that adheres to a Rock […]. 1665, Robert Hooke, Micrographia, section XXII:
   • 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. 1941, Richard Headstrom, Adventures with a Microscope:

Forms