lichen

Etymology

It is borrowed from Latin līchēn (“lichen, liverwort, a skin disease”),^[2][3][4][5] from Ancient Greek λειχήν (leikhḗn), first a skin disease and in Hellenistic Greek also the plant,^[2][6] from λείχω (leíkhō, “to lick”),^[2][4][6][5] from Proto-Indo-European *leigh- (“to lick”), the source of English lick.^[3][4][2] Etymonline and Barnhart give the original sense of the Greek word as "what eats around itself",^[3][5] and the OED explains that the plant and the disease seemed to lick the organism they covered;^[2] Klein glosses it "the licker".^[6] Barnhart and Weekley call the link with the verb probable.^[5][7] The OED compares Middle French lichine for the skin disease (1363), French lichen for the plant (1546), Spanish liquen (1575) and Italian lichene (1542).^[2]

Earliest recorded meaning

Any of various small plants or plant-like organisms forming crusty or branching growths on soil, rocks and trees: 1562, in W. Bullein's Booke of Simples.^[2][8] The same year a translation of the Secrets of Alexis used it for a skin disease.^[2] Barnhart's first record is 1601, for liverwort, in Holland's translation of Pliny's Natural History,^[5][9] and the Shorter Oxford dates the word to the early 17th century.^[10]

Semantic evolution

The word at first covered liverworts, then grouped with the lichens,^[2][5][10] and Etymonline explains that liverwort was thought to be related.^[3] The current sense of an organism of an alga and a fungus growing together is recorded from 1715 in Etymonline and Barnhart.^[3][5] As in Greek, the word also named skin diseases, later especially those with small, firm papules;^[2][3][4] from 1607 to 1661 it was also used for the horny knob on the inside of a horse's leg, the chestnut.^[2] The verb, to cover with lichen, is recorded from 1839, figuratively from 1883,^[2] and Tennyson wrote of bones lichened into colour with the crags.^[11]

Timeline

• 1562 – a lichen or similar plant; also a skin disease.^[2]
• 1601 – liverwort, in Holland's Pliny.^[5]
• 1607 – the chestnut on a horse's leg (obsolete by 1661).^[2]
• 1715 – the composite organism of a fungus and an alga.^[3][5]
• 1839 – verb, to cover with lichen.^[2]
• 1883 – verb, figuratively, to overgrow or obscure as lichen does.^[2]

Meanings

Noun

1. An organism made up of a fungus and an alga or cyanobacterium living in symbiosis, forming crusty, leafy or branching patches on rocks, tree bark and bare ground: Grey lichen covered the old churchyard wall.^{[4][12][11][2]}
2. (medicine) Any of various skin diseases marked by small, firm papules, such as lichen planus.^{[4][12][10][2]}

Verb

1. To cover with lichen, or as if with lichen.^[4][11][2]

Word family

• lichenous
• lichened
• lichenization
• lichenlike
• lichenification
• lichenin
• lichenology

Related words

• lick

Usage notes

The usual pronunciation rhymes with liken; the British variant with the sound of ch in church began as a spelling pronunciation.^[2][11][12]

References

1. ^ a b Wiktionary, the free dictionary, https://en.wiktionary.org
2. ^ a b c d e f g h i j k l m n o p q r s t Oxford English Dictionary Online (accessed March 2026), Oxford: Oxford University Press
3. ^ a b c d e f g Harper, Douglas. Online Etymology Dictionary, https://www.etymonline.com
4. ^ a b c d e f g The American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language (online 2024), 5th ed., Boston: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt
5. ^ a b c d e f g h i Barnhart, Robert K. (1988), The Barnhart Dictionary of Etymology
6. ^ a b c Klein, Ernest. A Comprehensive Etymological Dictionary of the English Language. 2 vols. Amsterdam: Elsevier, 1966–1967.
7. ^ Weekley, Ernest (1921), An Etymological Dictionary of Modern English, London: John Murray
8. ^ Kay, Christian; Roberts, Jane; Samuels, Michael; Wotherspoon, Irené, eds. (2009), Historical Thesaurus of the Oxford English Dictionary, Oxford: Oxford University Press; online edition (2024)
9. ^ Barnhart, Robert K., ed. (1995), The Barnhart Concise Dictionary of Etymology, New York: HarperCollins
10. ^ a b c Shorter Oxford English Dictionary on Historical Principles (2002), 5th ed., ed. William R. Trumble and Angus Stevenson, Oxford: Oxford University Press
11. ^ a b c d Merriam-Webster Unabridged Dictionary (2024), online ed., Springfield, Mass.: Merriam-Webster
12. ^ a b c Collins English Dictionary (2023), Glasgow: HarperCollins