plant-animal

English

Etymology

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

Noun

plant-animal (plural plant-animals)

  1. (now rare) An organism having characteristics of both plants and animals; a zoophyte, later chiefly an animal with structural resemblances to a plant. [from 17th c.]
    • 1665, Robert Hooke, Micrographia, section XXII:
      From which Description, they [sponges] seem to be a kind of Plant-Animal that adheres to a Rock […].
    • 1915, DH Lawrence The Rainbow, Vintage 2011, p. 408:
      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 […] .
    • 1941, Richard Headstrom, Adventures with a Microscope:
      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.
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