from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 5th Edition.
noun A fold or ridge, as of skin, membrane, or shell.
from The Century Dictionary.
noun In pathology, a matted, filthy condition of the hair, from disease. Also called plica polonica, helosis, and trichosis.
noun In botany, a diseased state in plants in which the buds, instead of developing true branches, become short twigs, and these in their turn produce others of the same sort, the whole forming an entangled mass.
noun In zoology and anatomy, a fold or folding of a part.
noun In entomology, a prominent ridge or carina, often turned over or inclined to one side, so that it appears like a fold; specifically, a longitudinal ridge on the internal surface of each elytron, near the outer edge; an elytral ridge, found in certain Coleoptera.
noun In herpetology: [capitalized] A genus of American iguanoid lizards: named from the folds of skin on the sides.
noun A lizard of this genus: as, the dotted plica, P. punctata.
noun In mensural music: A kind of grace-note.
noun A kind of ligature
noun The stem or tail of a note.
noun The bend or flexure of the wing at the carpal joint. [Rare.]
from the GNU version of the Collaborative International Dictionary of English.
noun (Med.) A disease of the hair (Plica polonica), in which it becomes twisted and matted together. The disease is of Polish origin, and is hence called also Polish plait.
noun (Bot.) A diseased state in plants in which there is an excessive development of small entangled twigs, instead of ordinary branches.
noun (Zoöl.) The bend of the wing of a bird.
from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License.
noun A fold or crease, especially of skin or other tissue.
noun Polish plait, a disease of the hair in which it becomes twisted and matted together.
noun botany A diseased state in plants in which there is an excessive development of small entangled twigs, instead of ordinary branches.
noun zoology The bend of the wing of a bird.
from WordNet 3.0 Copyright 2006 by Princeton University. All rights reserved.
noun a folded part (as in skin or muscle)
Etymologies
from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 4th Edition
[Medieval Latin, fold, from Latin plicāre, to fold; see plek- in Indo-European roots.]
from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License
From Medieval Latin, from Latin plicare ("to fold")
Support
Help support Wordnik (and make this page ad-free) by adopting the word plica.
Examples
Lateral to the caruncula is a slight semilunar fold of conjunctiva, the concavity of which is directed toward the cornea; it is called the plica semilunaris.
Further, the tonsil extends for a variable distance under cover of the glossopalatine arch, and is here covered by a reduplication of mucous membrane; the upper part of this fold reaches across the supratonsillar fossa, between the two arches, as a thin fold sometimes termed the plica semilunaris; the remainder of the fold is called the plica triangularis.
By Linné an undue number of branches was designated as "plica," from the analogy with the disease of the hair known as plica polonica: "_Plicata dicitur planta, cum arbor vel ramus excrescit minimis intertextis ramulis, tanquam plica polonica ex pilis, ceu instar nidi Picæ, quod vulgo a genio ortum arbitratur; frequens apud nos in Betula, præsertim
The plica affects only the common people at present, but all the evils originating in schism are corroding and destroying the higher classes of the republic.
Comments
Log in or sign up to get involved in the conversation. It's quick and easy.