a. and sb. 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 that 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. sb.
1. One of a company who eat at the same table, a mess-mate.
1460. 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. Illustr. Mag., Nov., 72. (Eton) In 1614 there seem to have been about forty ‘Commensalls.’
2. Biol. An animal or plant that 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. trans. 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.
