cicatrice
Americannoun
plural
cicatricesOther Word Forms
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
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
“It’s five years ago, at the affair of the Tchanak-Kampo, and here’s a little reminiscence of it;” and, throwing back the sleeve of his right arm, he showed the cicatrice of a great sabre cut.
From Travels in Tartary, Thibet, and China During the years 1844-5-6 Volume 2 by Huc, Évariste Régis
It is usually, indeed, the minor poetry of an age which keeps most distinctly the "cicatrice and capable impressure" of a passing literary fashion.
From A History of English Romanticism in the Eighteenth Century by Beers, Henry A. (Henry Augustin)
They saw it was an old cicatrice, sure to be recognised by any father who had taken the slightest interest in the physical condition of his son.
From The Finger of Fate A Romance by Reid, Mayne
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.
