commensal, a. and n.
(kəˈmɛnsəl)
Also 5 comensale.
[a. F. commensal:—med.L. commensāl-is, f. com- together with + mensa table, mensālis belonging to the table.]
A. adj.
1. Eating at, or pertaining to, the same table.
| c 1400 Test. Love i. (1560) 275 b/2 O where hast thou bee so long commensall? a 1693 Urquhart Rabelais iii. xxxviii. 317 Commensal fool. 1844 Fraser's Mag. XXX. 269/1 Commensal pleasures. |
2. Biol. Applied to animals or plants which live as tenants of others (distinguished from parasitic).
| 1877 W. Thomson Voy. Challenger I. ii. 140 The tube..is very frequently inhabited by..a commensal decapod crustacean. 1881 Lubbock in Nature No. 618. 405 Schwendener proposed, in 1869, the..theory..that lichens are not autonomous organisms, but commensal associations of a fungus parasitic on an alga. |
B. n.
1. One of a company who eat at the same table, a mess-mate.
| 1460 J. Capgrave Chron. 235 There was he mad lyster of the Paleis, and comensale with the Pope. 1624–47 Bp. Hall Rem. Wks. (1660) 258 The guests of the great King of Heaven, and the commensals of the Lord Jesus, with whom we do then [at the Eucharist] communicate. 1887 Lowell Democr. 229 The holders of them might be commensals. |
† b. Formerly a name for the ‘Oppidans’ at Eton. Obs. (Cf. Commoner at Winchester.)
| 1615 Eton Audit-bk. in M. Lyte Hist. Eton Coll. (1889) 193 For a little table to lanthen the Commensalls table in the Hall. 1884 Eng. Illust. Mag. Nov. 72 (Eton) In 1614 there seem to have been about forty ‘Commensalls’. |
2. Biol. An animal or plant which lives attached to or as a tenant of another, and shares its food (distinguished from a parasite, which feeds on the body of its host). Also applied to the host itself.
| 1872 Dana Corals i. 25 Frequently each Actinia has its special favorite, proving an inherited preference for..that kind of change or range of conditions, which the preferred commensal provides. 1879 tr. Semper's Anim. Life 74 It might be..that the green constituents were not integral elements of the animal, but foreign bodies, living within it,—commensals or ‘messmates’, as they are called. 1880 Day Jrnl. Linn. Soc., Zool. XV. 51 A common example of a commensal is the Sucking-fish. |
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▸ commensally adv. (a) Biol. in the manner of a commensal organism; (b) through commensality or cohabitation.
| 1897 Science 9 Apr. 595/1 A Nereid..which lives *commensally with the Hermit crab, Eupagurus alaskensis. 1914 Lancet 23 May 1499/1 While much of the disease was of hereditary origin, in acquired cases it seemed to be spread commensally and mainly by other means than by sexual intercourse. 1998 L. Margulis & K. V. Schwartz Five Kingdoms (ed. 3) iii. 238/2 Malacobdella is the unique filter-feeding nemertine, living commensally within the mantle cavity of clams. 2002 J. Neusner Mishnah i. 27 The generative issue is how those who properly separate tithes are to relate, commercially and commensally, to those that do not. |