a. [ad. L. fungōsus, f. fungus: see FUNGUS and -OUS. Cf. F. fongueux.]

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  1.  Of or pertaining to fungi; having the nature of a fungus. † Also, formerly, Resembling a fungus in texture; spongy.

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c. 1420.  Pallad. on Husb., IX. 42. And chaf is bettir for hem than is donge, For they therof wol be right fungous stronge.

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1578.  J. Banister, The Historie of Man, I. 8. The tables of the bones of ye head whiche shut betwene them the Fungous substaunce.

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1601.  Holland, Pliny, XVIII. xxxv. I. 613. We may be sure of raine, in case wee see a fungous substance or soot gathered about lamps and candle snuffs.

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1661.  Lovell, Hist. Anim. & Min., Introd. Their lungs are single, fibrous, divided by pipes, very long and fungous.

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1712.  trans. Pomet’s Hist. Drugs, I. 27. Rhubarb is a thick fungous Root.

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1780.  A. Young, Tour Irel., I. 397. Twenty-five acres of spungy fungous bog, from 8 to 16 feet deep, had been cut into very great turf holes, which holes, though they held water, and had drowned many a cow, yet had so far drained the bog as to make the less draining necessary.

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1781.  Cowper, Conversat., 54. The sapless wood, divested of the bark, Grows fungous.

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1799.  J. Robertson, Agric. Perth, 274. Where there is a deep soil, with a crust of fungous moss, tough bent, matted rushes, or turfy peat-earth on the surface, burning is unquestionably the best method of improving.

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1830.  Lindley, Nat. Syst. Bot., 221. Placentæ either single and fungous, or double and thin.

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1855.  O. W. Holmes, Poems, 237. No fungous weeds invade thy scanty soil.

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1876.  T. Hardy, Ethelberta (1890), 84. It was an afternoon which had a fungous smell out of doors, all being sunless and stagnant overhead and around.

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  transf. and fig.  1652.  J. Hall, Height Eloquence, p. vi. Fungous and empty inflations are evill in an Oration, as well as in a naturall body.

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1853.  Ruskin, Stones Ven., II. vii. § 47. 269. The base principles of modern building … some fungous wall of nascent rottenness that a thunder-shower soaks down.

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1859.  Hawthorne, Fr. & It. Jrnls., II. 267. Antiquity, with merely the natural growth of fungous human life upon it.

16

  b.  Path. (Cf. FUNGUS 2.)

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1667.  R. Lower, in Phil. Trans., II. 614. What the cause may be of that fungous Excressence, or why Horses are peculiarly obnoxious to it.

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1725.  Bradley, Fam. Dict., s.v. White honey Charge, Verdigrease or Vitriols keep down the growth of proud fungous Flesh.

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1803.  Phil. Trans., XCIII. 207. The following case of fungous excrescence from the tongue.

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1834.  J. Forbes, Laennec’s Dis. Chest (ed. 4), 669. The celebrated Desault mistook a fungous tumour of the bladder for a calculus.

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1877.  Roberts, Handbk. Med. (ed. 3), I. 275. This form of cancer may produce very vascular fungous growths.

22

  2.  Growing or springing up suddenly like a mushroom, not durable or substantial.

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1751.  J. Harris, Hermes, III. v. (1765), 424. That fungous growth of Novels and of Pamphlets, where, it is to be feared, they rarely find any rational pleasure, and more rarely still, any solid improvement.

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1782.  V. Knox, Ess. (1819), I. xiv. 86. The fungous production of the common novel-wright will be too insignificant to attract his notice.

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1816.  T. L. Peacock, Headlong Hall, vii. I confess the sight of those manufactories, which have suddenly sprung up, like fungous excrescences, in the bosom of these wild and desolate scenes, impressed me with as much horror and amazement as the sudden appearance of the stocking-manufactory struck into the mind of Rousseau, when, in a lonely valley of the Alps, he had just congratulated himself on finding a spot where man had never been.

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1829.  W. G. Meredith, Mem. Chas. K. of Sweden, Introd. § 33. 89. One of the mushroom monarchs of Napoleon, fortunate in not being as evanescent as his fungous brethren.

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1874.  H. R. Reynolds, John Bapt., i. § 6. 59. These [temporary elements] have been fungous in their growth and deadly in their diffusive influence; against them the spirit of the gospel is a protest.

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  Hence Fungousness, fungous quality.

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1730–6.  in Bailey (folio).

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