Cicatrize

Part of speech: verb

Definitions

1. The act of healing a wound involves the development of scar tissue, which denotes the biological repair process of skin or tissue after injury, signifying the reconstruction of damaged regions
2. The transformation that occurs as damaged tissue restores itself involves the creation of scar tissue, reflecting the natural mechanism of repair in skin or other tissues once injury takes place
3. To cause a wound or damaged tissue to heal by producing scar tissue that closes and repairs the injury

Etymology: Cicatrize is a straightforward formation: it takes the Latin "cicatrix", meaning a scar, and adds the suffix "-ize", which turns a noun into a verb meaning to bring about the state that the noun names. To cicatrize is therefore to make a scar form. The Latin noun itself is the older piece, and it traces back to ancient roots, but the verb is English's own tidy construction built from that noun and the suffix. The suffix has a longer journey than the word it attaches to. It began in ancient Greek as a verb-forming ending, passed into Late Latin, and then entered Middle French and Middle English before settling into modern English as "-ize". Writers have used it ever since to create verbs from nouns and adjectives, so cicatrize sits comfortably alongside many other words that share this pattern.

Synonyms: heal, scar, close up

Antonyms: wound, injure