cicatrice
Americannoun
plural
cicatricesOther Word Forms
- cicatrical adjective
- cicatricial adjective
- noncicatricial adjective
- paracicatricial adjective
Explanation
A cicatrice is a scar, the mark left on your skin when a cut, scrape, or burn has started to heal. If you wipe out on your bike you might end up, weeks later, with a cicatrice on your knee. It's much more common to use the word scar, but you can also use cicatrice, or cicatrix, as it's also spelled. Often a cicatrice will fade over time, as the initial wound completes the healing process, but sometimes a cicatrice can stick around for the rest of your life as a reminder of your youthful skateboard adventures. Cicatrice comes from the Latin cicatrix, "scar."
Example Sentences
Examples are provided to illustrate real-world usage of words in context. Any opinions expressed do not reflect the views of Dictionary.com.
For it was the body of his friend, John St. Helen, beyond peradventure?a hooplike scar over the eye, a neck cicatrice, an old leg fracture, a crooked thumb.
From Time Magazine Archive
She lived to be eighty-five, and to the day of her death caressed the scar—the cicatrice of a love-wound.
From Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great - Volume 12 Little Journeys to the Homes of Great Scientists by Hubbard, Elbert
The handsome stalwart fellow, bronzed and weather-worn, his brow crossed by a deep and honourable cicatrice!
From The Curse of Koshiu A Chronicle of Old Japan by Wingfield, Lewis
The fall of pitiful tears, tears from the sweet blue of her guileless eyes, came hissing against the red-hot cicatrice.
From Love's Usuries by Creswicke, Louis
"This proves the truth of it!" cried Fandor, pointing to a cicatrice on the back of the neck of the murdered man: it was the clear mark of where an abscess had been.
From Messengers of Evil Being a Further Account of the Lures and Devices of Fantômas by Souvestre, Pierre
Definitions and idiom definitions from Dictionary.com Unabridged, based on the Random House Unabridged Dictionary, © Random House, Inc. 2023
Idioms from The American Heritage® Idioms Dictionary copyright © 2002, 2001, 1995 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company.
