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
It is concealed by the paint, but remove that, and you will find it hath all the form of a cicatrice of a corresponding shape.
From The Wept of Wish-Ton-Wish by Cooper, James Fenimore
He looked full into Grey's face, and Grey looked full into his; and as he looked the great cicatrice seemed to open itself and to become purple with fresh blood stains.
From Can You Forgive Her? by Trollope, Anthony
The fire has seared, the cicatrice remains—though to be hidden away, of course.
From 'Murphy' A Message to Dog Lovers by Gambier-Parry, Ernest
His features were hard, and on one cheek he had a cicatrice, the remains of some misfortune that had happened to him in his boyhood.
From An Eye for an Eye by Trollope, Anthony
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.
