| The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language: Fourth Edition. 2000. |
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| mosaic |
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| SYLLABICATION: | mo·sa·ic |
| PRONUNCIATION: |  m -z   k |
| NOUN: | 1a. A picture or decorative design made by setting small colored pieces, as of stone or tile, into a surface. b. The process or art of making such pictures or designs. 2. A composite picture made of overlapping, usually aerial, photographs. 3. Something that resembles a mosaic: a mosaic of testimony from various witnesses. 4. Botany A viral disease of plants, resulting in light and dark areas in the leaves, which often become shriveled and dwarfed. 5. A photosensitive surface, as in the iconoscope of a television camera. 6. Biology An individual exhibiting mosaicism. | | TRANSITIVE VERB: | Inflected forms: mo·sa·icked, mo·sa·ick·ing, mo·sa·ics
1. To make by mosaic: mosaic a design on a rosewood box. 2. To adorn with or as if with mosaic: mosaic a sidewalk. | | ETYMOLOGY: | Middle English musycke, from Old French mosaique, from Old Italian mosaico, from Medieval Latin m sicum, neuter of msicus, of the Muses, from Latin Msa, Muse, from Greek Mousa. See men-1 in Appendix I. | | OTHER FORMS: | mo·sai·cist (m-z-sst) —NOUN
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| The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition. Copyright © 2000 by Houghton Mifflin Company. Published by the Houghton Mifflin Company. All rights reserved. |
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