Cicatrice

Part of speech: noun

Definitions

1. A mark or scar left on the skin or tissue after a wound has healed
2. A healed wound's permanent mark or indentation remaining on skin or bodily tissue
3. The hardened fibrous tissue formation that replaces damaged skin after injury has resolved

Etymology: Latin "cicatrix" meant a scar, and the word has barely changed on its way into English. Its Latin root is thought to be connected to "cicatrix" meaning a mark left on the skin, and the word has kept that bodily sense from Roman medicine onward. English took it directly from Latin, so the spelling and meaning still track the original closely. The Latin word itself belonged to ordinary physical description: a mark left after a wound healed over. Physicians and writers in the Latin tradition used it for that visible trace, and English later borrowed it in the same clinical register. Its use in English is therefore a direct inheritance of a term that has always named the healed evidence of injury rather than the injury itself.

Synonyms: scar