PARASITE • DICTIONARY ONE.COM • Definition of Parasite

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/pˈɛrəsˌaɪt/ Listen

noun

Parasite n.

One who frequents the tables of the rich, or who lives at another's expense, and earns his welcome by flattery; a hanger-on; a toady; a sycophant. "Thou, with trembling fear, Or like a fawning parasite, obey'st." "Parasites were called such smell-feasts as would seek to be free guests at rich men's tables."

(Bot.)

(a)

A plant obtaining nourishment immediately from other plants to which it attaches itself, and whose juices it absorbs; sometimes, but erroneously, called epiphyte.

(b)

A plant living on or within an animal, and supported at its expense, as many species of fungi of the genus Torrubia.

(Zool.)

(a)

An animal which lives during the whole or part of its existence on or in the body of some other animal, feeding upon its food, blood, or tissues, as lice, tapeworms, etc.

(b)

An animal which steals the food of another, as the parasitic jager.

(c)

An animal which habitually uses the nest of another, as the cowbird and the European cuckoo.

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Etymology of 'Parasite'

Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48

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"Parasite" Quotes from Famous Books

... have just quoted, says, but he says it in the person of Gnatho,[Footnote: A parasite in Terence's play of Eunuchus, from which these verses are quoted.]—a sort of friend which only a frivolous mind can tolerate. But as there are many like Gnatho, who stand higher than he did in place, fortune, and reputation, then subserviency is ...

— De Amicitia, Scipio's Dream • Marcus Tullius Ciceronis

... had borne him, she desired quite as passionately to be self-supporting, to earn a sufficient income of her own, to be dependent on no one. She might have her passing caprices and her loose and flippant mode of talking, but she wasn't going to be a failure, a cadger, a parasite, a "fallen" woman. She fully realized that in England no woman has fallen who is self-supporting, whose income meets her expenses and who pays her way. Given those guarantees, all else that she does which is not actually criminal is eventually ...

— Mrs. Warren's Daughter - A Story of the Woman's Movement • Sir Harry Johnston

... from a parasite, some ointment should be used, and is best applied under the immediate direction of a specialist in Diseases ...

— Papers on Health • John Kirk

... similar experience. In the beginning we have been vastly diverted by the quips and cranks and merry wiles of the knavish slave, the plaints of love-lorn youth, the impotent rage of the baffled pander, the fruitless growlings of the hungry parasite's belly. We have been amused, perhaps astonished, on further reading, at meeting our new-found friends in other plays, clothed in different names to be sure and supplied in part with a fresh stock of jests, but ...

— The Dramatic Values in Plautus • William Wallace Blancke

... bitter attack upon Caesar and his parasite Mamurra was notwithdrawn, but remains to us as No. 29 of the Poems of Catullus. The doubtful authority for Caesar's answer to it is the statement in the Life of Julius Caesar by Suetonius that, on the day of its appearance, Catullus apologized ...

— The Spectator, Volumes 1, 2 and 3 - With Translations and Index for the Series • Joseph Addison and Richard Steele

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