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 […].

   • 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.