planimal

English

Etymology

Blend of plant +‎ animal

Noun

planimal (plural planimals)

1. Something that has characteristics of both plants and animals.
   • 1968, Alta: University of Birmingham Review - Issues 7-11, page 136:

     Such a 'planimal' could move itself over the ground only at a rate considerably slower than that of a terrestrial slug but if other plants could not move at all, this would be sufficient.

   • 1970, New Scientist - Volume 47, page 649:

     This week my planimal friend Daedalus continues his exploration of human symbiosis with useful organisms. Those green flatworms, permeated with photosynthesizing algae, represent a distinct advance on his plumbed-in photosynthetic sandwich-boards of last weak.

   • 1979, Christiaan Barnard, The best medicine, page 58:

     Overseas scientists have taken an animal cell and crossed it with a cell from a tobacco plant to produce a half-animal, half-plant creature known as a planimal.

   • 2014, T. J. Bass, The Godwhale:

     That is our Syncytial Planimal, genetically engineered to give us both plant and animal proteins.

   • 2015, Anand Madhu, Brain Function and Dysfunction, page 26:

     The planimal was the first post-plant, followed by the versatile, Octopamine-blessed animant, and only then came the animals.