[f. LICHEN sb.] trans. To cover with lichens.
1859. Tennyson, Elaine, 44. There they lay till all their bones were … lichen’d into colour with the crags.
1862. Macm. Mag., Sept., 426/1. How was it [island] lichened and mossed…?
1864. Sir J. K. James, Tasso, III. xiii. note. Turrets lichened with gold.
fig. 1883. Harper’s Mag., Feb., 438/2. Popular superstition has not had time yet to lichen over the familiar objects of his country-side.
Hence Lichened ppl. a., Lichening vbl. sb.
1823. Praed, Poems (1865), II. 274. O’er the natural tomb The lichened pine rears up its form of gloom.
1887. Ruskin, Præterita, II. 401. The deeply lichened stones of its low churchyard wall.
1892. Baring-Gould, in Cornh. Mag., Sept., 230. The rudeness of the masonry and the lichening of the stones were no real indications of antiquity.
