cicatrice

American  

[sik-uh-tris, -trees] / ˈsɪk ə trɪs, -tris /

noun

plural

cicatrices

1. cicatrix.

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Other 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

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

Two or three miles away on our right the ground rose gently to a range of low wooded hills, and on their bare green slopes brown furrows showed up like a cicatrice.

From Leaves from a Field Note-Book by Morgan, John Hartman

When I recovered consciousness, I found that my head had been shaved, and that the cicatrice of my old wound was occasionally very painful.

From The Portent & Other Stories by MacDonald, George

On his cheek Lucian saw the cicatrice of which Diana had spoken, and mainly by which the dead man had been falsely identified as Vrain.

From The Silent House by Hume, Fergus

What a delectable conspirator!' laughed my lord, cooling his aching head against the wall, while the cicatrice on his forehead grew red, and an evil glitter shone in his eyes.

From My Lords of Strogue, Vol. I (of III) A Chronicle of Ireland, from the Convention to the Union by Wingfield, Lewis

Related Words

• blister
• crater
• defect
• discoloration
• disfigurement
• flaw
• scab
• wound