lichenous

English

Etymology

lichen +‎ -ous

Adjective

lichenous (comparative more lichenous, superlative most lichenous)

1. Covered in lichen.
   • 1900 December – 1901 August, H[erbert] G[eorge] Wells, “chapter 9”, in The First Men in the Moon, London: George Newnes, […], published 1901, →OCLC:

     We made a few gargantuan strides, leapt three or four times more, and sat down at last in a lichenous hollow.

   • 1917, Walter de la Mare, “The Two Houses” in The Sunken Garden, and Other Poems, London: Beaumont Press, p. 39,^[1]

     Green-graped upon their walls

     An ancient hoary vine

     Hath clustered their carven, lichenous stones

     With tendril serpentine.

2. Composed of lichen.
   • 1886 May – 1887 April, Thomas Hardy, “chapter 27”, in The Woodlanders […], volume (please specify |volume=I to III), London; New York, N.Y.: Macmillan and Co., published 1887, →OCLC:

     He went on foot across the wilder recesses of the park, where slimy streams of green moisture, exuding from decayed holes caused by old amputations, ran down the bark of the oaks and elms, the rind below being coated with a lichenous wash as green as emerald.

   • 1933, Alfred Sherwood Romer, Man and the Vertebrates, University of Chicago Press, 2nd edition, 1937, Chapter 9, p. 206,^[2]

     The tree sloths of the South American forests are among the oddest of mammalian types. They are small nocturnal forms with a lichenous growth which often gives a greenish tinge to their gray hair.

3. Resembling lichen.
   • 1907, Louis Fischer, Diseases of Infancy and Childhood, Philadelphia: F.A. Davis, Chapter 6. Disorders Resulting from Improper Nutrition, p. 358,^[3]

     The mouth becomes the seat of a parasitic stomatitis; the skin is harsh and dry; small boils or a lichenous rash make their appearance.

   • 1958, Ritchie Calder, Men Against the Desert, Allen & Unwin, p. 89,^[4]

     As the day advanced we saw the miracle of the desert flowers in vivid contrast to the lichenous grey of the persistent bushes and shrubs with which I had grown familiar throughout the journey.

Synonyms

• lichenose