Plant-animal

noun

noun ·Rare ·Advanced level

Definitions

Noun
  1. 1
    An organism having characteristics of both plants and animals; a zoophyte, later chiefly an animal with structural resemblances to a plant. archaic

    "From which Description, they [sponges] seem to be a kind of Plant-Animal that adheres to a Rock […]."

Example

More examples

"From which Description, they [sponges] seem to be a kind of Plant-Animal that adheres to a Rock […]."

Etymology

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

Data sourced from Wiktionary, WordNet, CMU, and other open linguistic databases. Updated March 2026.