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plant-animal. In DICTIOUS you will not only get to know all the dictionary meanings for the word
plant-animal, but we will also tell you about its etymology, its characteristics and you will know how to say
plant-animal in singular and plural. Everything you need to know about the word
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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)
- (now rare) An organism having characteristics of both plants and animals; a zoophyte, later chiefly an animal with structural resemblances to a plant.
1665, Robert Hooke, Micrographia, section XXII:From which Description, they [sponges] seem to be a kind of Plant-Animal that adheres to a Rock […].
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.