parasiticadj.n.

1630 G. Hakewill Apologie (ed. 2) (advt.) sig. Yy6 The Bishop received small thankes for his parasiticke presentation.

1649 Εἰκων Βασιλικη xx. 197 Some parasitick Preachers.

1654 R. Vilvain tr. Enchiridium Epigr. vi. 79 Parasitic Panegyrics.

1855 C. Kingsley Westward Ho! (1869) viii. 150 Somewhat of a gnathonic and parasitic soul.

1878 ‘G. Eliot’ College Breakfast Party in Macmillan's Mag. July 173 A parasitic growth On the vast real and ideal world Of man and nature.

1909 Q. Rev. Jan. 83 The so-called parasitic trades—that is, trades in which it is alleged that workers who have incomes or maintenances derived from sources other than their wages underbid those who live entirely on their wages.

1969 J. Singer et al. tr. I. B. Singer Estate i. vii. 85 They [sc. women] wove a net about a man, entangled him with duties, ensnared him with parasitic children, and finally destroyed him.

1993 New Scientist 25 Dec. 23/3 For some people, the military-industrial complex is parasitic.

1811 J. Pinkerton Petralogy I. 208 The most usual parasitic stones of granitel are schorl and garnets.

1891 E. A. Freeman Sketches French Trav. ii. ii. 112 A number of parasitic buildings on the south side [of a church].

1899 Geogr. Jrnl. 13 539 On these three mountain systems due to great Earth-folds, volcanic mountains are parasitic, but their distribution is irregular.

1970 Jrnl. Brit. Astron. Assoc. 80 197 There are a few exceptions, as when a caldera-type crater intersects an earlier, parasitic (adventive) crater.

1995 Jrnl. Amer. Planning Assoc. 61 334/2 The study stressed the need..to identify parasitic buildings to be demolished, and to prescribe the heights of new infill buildings.

2000 Austral. Jrnl. Earth Sci. 47 895 Stress mapping indicates that gold ores should develop..in and around thrusts in both anticlines and parasitic synclines.

1870 F. A. March Compar. Gram. Anglo-Saxon Lang. 20 The consonants most difficult to make, the trills l, r, and the gutturals c, g, h, are often accompanied by an involuntary sympathetic movement of other parts of the organs, which produces what may be called a parasitic sound.

1871 B. H. Kennedy Public School Lat. Gram. 8 Parasitic u or v follows q, ng, and s; as, sequor or seqvor; lingua or lingva; suavis or svavis.

1894 W. M. Lindsay Lat. Lang. 145 The inserted or ‘parasitic’ vowel (sometimes styled in the terminology of the Sanskrit grammarians ‘svarabhaktic’ vowel..) is often seen in the older Latin loanwords from Greek.

1957 R. Quirk & C. L. Wrenn Old Eng. Gram. (ed. 2) 142 A convenient term for these ‘intrusive’ or ‘parasitic’ vowels, as they are sometimes called, is the ancient Indian grammarians' term svarabhakti.

1992 Oxf. Compan. Eng. Lang. at Parasitic Many English words have sounds and letters that were once parasitic but are now considered normal.

1889 Telegraphic Jrnl. 1 Nov. 497/1 If..the iron core were solid, the E.M.Fs. induced in it would..cause enormous currents to flow... They are currents which could not be utilised... By suitably dividing the iron core..these so-called parasitic currents may be rendered almost negligible.

1921 Wireless World 15 Oct. 437/1 The..parasitic noise which abounds in amplifiers wired on the usual principle.

1959 Listener 25 June 1109/1 They are electric insulators and therefore do not carry parasitic electric currents (so-called eddy currents) when their magnetization changes rapidly.

1972 Sci. Amer. Aug. 19/2 The Wankel operates with less friction than a conventional engine... The lower friction alone means decreased parasitic losses and can be translated directly into an increase in fuel economy.

1989 DesignCenter ii. 31/1 ‘At speed’ testing lets designers discover any parasitic capacitances from cables or board connections that would limit a design's performance.

1989 New Scientist 2 Sept. 35/2 Some of the light rays travel horizontally in the active layer, setting up a parasitic process that robs the vertical rays of power.

1936 L. S. Palmer Wireless Engin. xii. 469 Antenna B is not directly energised from the power source, but receives its current through the induction and radiation field of the directly energised antenna A. Antenna B..is sometimes called a parasitic antenna.

1947 C. E. Tibbs Frequency Modulation Engin. vi. 114 When the parasitic aerial is at resonance.., and the separation between it and the energised aerial is held at 0·1λ, maximum radiation is in the direction of the parasitic aerial, which is then called a ‘director’.

1970 J. Earl How to choose Tuners & Amplifiers v. 113 When a reflector and directors (called parasitic elements because they are not electrically connected to the dipole) are added to the system the centre impedance of the dipole falls well below 75Ω.

1982 Giant Bk. Electronics Projects vii. 319 One can add parasitic or phased elements around the basic antenna.

1800 W. Kirby in Trans. Linn. Soc. 5 112 (title) Observations upon certain fungi, which are parasitics of the wheat.

1880 Bot. Gaz. 5 38 Much interest has been manifested recently in regard to the germination of that class of plants which have heretofore been regarded as parasitics.

1945 Ecol. Monogr. 15 338/1 Lianas, creepers, epiphytes and parasitics occasionally occur.

2001 Naturalia Sao Paulo 26 97 Of all species sampled,..11.7% were epiphytes, hemi-epiphytes or parasitics.

1943 F. E. Terman Radio Engineers' Handbk. vi. 498 Parasitics cause reduction in the power at the desired mode of operation, introduce spurious frequencies, give rise to distortion in linear amplifiers and modulators,..etc.

1967 Electronics 6 Mar. 177/2 (advt.) ‘Strays’, ‘streaks’, ‘parasitics’..you may forget them all.

1982 Giant Bk. Electronics Projects v. 183 ZI was fabricated to swamp any VHF parasitics that might develop.

1997 Electronic Products May 33/3 The package pinout is carefully designed to minimize or take advantage of parasitics.

1905 J. E. Wing Sheep Farming in Amer. 292 (heading) Husk, hoose, or parasitic bronchitis.

1951 Vet. Rec. 22 Dec. 864/2 The literature presents certain references to the occurrence of parasitic bronchitis in adult cattle.

1967 W. R. Kelly Vet. Clin. Diagnosis vi. 27/2 (caption) Moderate degree of dyspnoea in a yearling heifer suffering from parasitic bronchitis.

1998 Farming News (Nexis) 20 Nov. 10 Reliance on cure rather than prevention has led to an explosion of husk or parasitic bronchitis in dairy cattle.

1863 J. D. Dana Man. Geol. iv. 694 Most of the small cones about volcanic mountains—called often parasitic cones—are formed in this manner about a point in some opened fissure from which lavas are ejected.

1908 Geogr. Jrnl. 31 474 Where the vent has shown a tendency to shift and form parasitic or subsidiary cones, the new opening has usually been nearer to the Pacific ocean.

1976 P. Francis Volcanoes iii. 104 The new eruption may take place completely independently of the main volcano, and a new mini-volcano or parasitic cone may be built up.

1979 J. R. Cameron et al. in Cell 16 748/2 Alternatively, Ty1 DNA may be a nonviral ‘parasitic’ DNA. Such DNAs may be capable of maintaining themselves in the genome and are transmitted by mating.

1989 Brit. Med. Jrnl. 3 June 1528/2 ‘Parasitic DNA’ has attracted attention too, after the announcement by Francis Crick and others at the Salk Institute in 1980 that some plant and animal DNA is there purely ‘for the ride’.

1996 Economist 20 July 85/1 For more than 500m years, the genes of insects have contained an ancient segment of parasitic DNA called R2.

1937 Times 27 Apr. 13/4 Flying near the ceiling the angle of incidence was increased, and with that came a growth in the relation of induced drag to parasitic drag.

1958 J. L. Nayler & T. F. Saunders Handbk. Aircraft Industry viii. 125 In modern aircraft the ‘parasitic’ drag due to extraneous items..has been largely eliminated.

1998 Skydiving June 35/1 (advt.) Conventional elliptical landing performance starts to drop off at a steady flight wing loading above about 1.7 PSF (pounds per square foot)... This is due in part to the parasitic drag on the jumper, and other non lift producing objects.

1966 J. B. Waterhouse in Trans. Royal Soc. N.Z., Geol. 3 183 Across the Tasman glacier parasitic folds appear to lie en echelon on the western limb of a major anticline.

1977 A. Hallam Planet Earth 67/3 These minor structures were at one time termed drag-folds, but are demonstrably not related to drag and are better termed parasitic folds.

1998 Proc. Royal Soc. A. 454 3140 An ubiquitous feature of folded layers is the presence of parasitic folds.

1897 J. McFadyean in Jrnl. Royal Agric. Soc. 3rd Ser. 8 53 Repeated doses of turpentine may thus be capable of preventing an attack of parasitic gastritis.

1941 G. Hambidge in Climate & Man (U.S. Dept. Agric.) i. 50 Studies of the prevalence of the common stomach worm which causes parasitic gastritis in sheep have shown that relatively high moisture..favors infestation.

1997 Herald (Glasgow) (Nexis) 23 Jan. 22 A successful application was made to the then Agricultural Research Council for a grant to fund a study of parasitic gastritis in cattle.

1897 J. McFadyean in Jrnl. Royal Agric. Soc. 3rd Ser. 8 38 (title) Parasitic gastro-enteritis in lambs.

1965 Vet. Rec. 9 Oct. 1196/1 Field investigations into parasitic gastro-enteritis in the west of Scotland showed that Ostertagia ostertagi was the predominant parasite.

1988 Philos. Trans. (Royal Soc.) B. 321 218 Parasitic gastroenteritis in ruminants is caused by a variety of nematode species.

1932 Proc. Royal Soc. A. 136 56 Any form of choke in the circuit introduced parasitic oscillations.

1947 R. Lee Electronic Transformers & Circuits vi. 181 Tubes may require resistors in the plate and grid leads to damp out parasitic oscillations.

1992 V. Capel Public Addr. Syst. xvii. 216 Oscilloscope... The display will show up any parasitic oscillation in an amplifier.

1869 Brit. Med. Jrnl. 13 Mar. 229/1 My friend Dr. Richardson..removed a large parasitic twin from the coccygeal region of an active and living child.

1912 Arch. Internal Med. 10 384 One of the twins may fail to develop certain parts and may actually lack a heart... The various degrees of the degenerate or parasitic twin is thus produced.

2007 Guardian 7 Nov. 22/3 The girl..suffers from ischiopagus, a rare condition which means that she is joined to a ‘parasitic twin’ who stopped developing in the womb.