Mycelium

Definition: Mycelium

Mycelium

Noun

1. The vegetative part of a fungus consisting of a mass of branching threadlike hyphae.

Date "mycelium" was first used in popular English literature: sometime before 1900. (references)

Etymology: Mycelium \My*ce"li*um\, noun. [New Latin expression, from the Greek expression my`khs mushroom.]. (Websters 1913)

Domain	Definition
Food & Agriculture	The vegetative part of a fungus, composed of hyphae and forming a thallus. Source: European Union. (references)
Source: compiled by the editor from various references; see credits.

Mycelium is the vegetative part of a fungus consisting of a mass of branching threadlike hyphae that exists below the ground or within another substrate. It is through the mycelium that a fungus absorbs nutrients from its environment. Mycelium is also a vital component in many ecosystems in that it helps increase the efficiency of water and nutrient absorption of many plants and also is vital to the decomposition and breaking-up of plant material to form the organic part of soil and to release carbon dioxide back into the atmosphere.

The familiar hat-like head and stalk of mushrooms are in fact reproductive structures of ascomycetes and basidiomycetes fungi, and are not classified as mycelium.

Crosswords: Mycelium

English words defined with "mycelium": fairy circle, fairy ring, family Moniliaceae ♦ genus Lycoperdon, Green oak ♦ hypha, Hyphae ♦ Lycoperdon ♦ Moniliaceae, mushroom, Mushroom spawn, Myceloid ♦ Oak leather ♦ rye ergot ♦ Sclerotium. (references)

Specialty definitions using "mycelium": Micromonospora, mycelial felt, mycelial pad, mycelial plaque. (references)

Non-English Usage: "Mycelium" is also a word in the following language with English translations in parentheses.

Swedish (mycelium, spawn).

"Mycelium" is generally used as a noun (singular) -- approximately 100.00% of the time. "Mycelium" is used about 12 times out of a sample of 100 million words spoken or written in English. Its rank is based on over 700,000 words used in the English language. Some parts-of-speech are not covered due to the samples used by the British National Corpus. (note: percents less than one-hundredth of one percent have been omitted)

Parts of Speech	Percent	Usage per 100 Million Words	Rank in English
Noun (singular)	100%	12	101,599

Expression using "mycelium": stringy mycelium. Additional references.
Source: compiled by the editor from various references; see credits.

The following statistics estimate the number of searches per day across the major English-language search engines as identified by various trade publications. Hyperlinks lead to commercial use of the expression at Amazon.com.

Language		Translations for "mycelium"; alternative meanings/domain in parentheses.
Albanian		miceli. (various references)

Bulgarian		мицелий. (various references)

Chinese		菌丝�". (various references)

Danish		mycelium (rodvaev af svampe) (mushroom spawn), mycelium (composed of hyphae and forming a thallus, spawn, thallus, the vegetative part of a fungus). (various references)

Dutch		mycelium (composed of hyphae and forming a thallus, the vegetative part of a fungus), zwamvlok (composed of hyphae and forming a thallus, the vegetative part of a fungus), thallus of mycelium (thallus), schimmelweefsel (composed of hyphae and forming a thallus, the vegetative part of a fungus), draadweefsel (composed of hyphae and forming a thallus, the vegetative part of a fungus). (various references)

Finnish		myseeli (composed of hyphae and forming a thallus, the vegetative part of a fungus), sienirihmasto (composed of hyphae and forming a thallus, spawn, the vegetative part of a fungus), sienihuovasto (composed of hyphae and forming a thallus, mycelial felt, mycelial pad, mycelial plaque, the vegetative part of a fungus). (various references)

French		mycelium, mycélium, tissu mycélien, thalle mycélium thalle. (various references)

German		Myzel (composed of hyphae and forming a thallus, the vegetative part of a fungus), Pilzmycel (mushroom spawn), Hyphen (thallus). (various references)

Greek		μυκητύλιο (thallus), μυκήλιον (composed of hyphae and forming a thallus, the vegetative part of a fungus), λευκό φύτρο μανιταριών (mushroom spawn), θαλλός (thallus). (various references)

Hebrew		תפטיר (spawn). (various references)

Hungarian		gomba tenyésztése. (various references)

Italian		micelio (composed of hyphae and forming a thallus, spawn, the vegetative part of a fungus), tallo o micelio (thallus), bianco di funghi (mushroom spawn). (various references)

Pig Latin		yceliummay

Portuguese		micélio (spawn). (various references)

Romanian		miceliu. (various references)

Russian		мицелий. (various references)

Serbo-Croatian		micelijum (micelle). (various references)

Spanish		micelio (composed of hyphae and forming a thallus, mycelial strand, rhizomorph, spawn, stringy mycelium, thallus, the vegetative part of a fungus). (various references)

Swedish		mycelium (spawn), mycel (composed of hyphae and forming a thallus, spawn, the vegetative part of a fungus), svampvävnad (composed of hyphae and forming a thallus, the vegetative part of a fungus). (various references)

Turkish		miselyum. (various references)

Ukrainian		грибниця. (various references)
Source: compiled by the editor from various translation references.

Misspellings
	"Mycelium" is suggested in spellcheckers for the following: Mycerinus. (additional references)
Source: compiled by the editor, based on several corpora (additional references).

Words rhyming with "mycelium" (pronounced 'My*ce"li*um'): Abandum, Absinthium, Acetabulum, Aconitum, Acrodactylum, Acropodium, Acrotarsium, Acroterium, Actinium, Addendum, Adiantum, Adytum, AEcidium, Agendum, Ageratum, Alabastrum, Alarum, Album, Alburnum, Alcyonium, Allium, Allodium, Alluvium, Aluminium, Aluminum, Ambulacrum, Amentum, Ammonium, Amoebaeum, Amomum, Amphibium, Anacardium, Androecium, Animalculum, Antependium, Antheridium, Anthodium, Antibrachium, Anticlinorium, Antrum, Apodyterium, Apothecium, Aquarium, Arachnidium, Arboretum, Arcanum, Archegonium, Archipterygium, Argentalium, arum. (additional references)

Scrabble® Enable2K-Verified Anagrams
	Words within the letters "c-e-i-l-m-m-u-y"
	-2 letters: lyceum.
	-3 letters: clime, ileum, limey, melic, muley.
	-4 letters: ceil, clue, culm, cyme, elmy, emic, immy, lice, lieu, lime, limy, luce, mice, mile, mime, mule, ylem, yule.
	-5 letters: cel, cue, cum, ecu, elm, emu, ice, icy, lei, leu, ley, lie, lum, lye, mel, mem, mil, mim, mum, umm, yum.
	Words containing the letters "c-e-i-l-m-m-u-y"
	+4 letters: immaculately.
	+5 letters: unsymmetrical.
Source: compiled by the editor from various references; see credits. SCRABBLE® is a registered trademark. All intellectual property rights in and to the game are owned in the U.S.A and Canada by Hasbro Inc., and throughout the rest of the world by J.W. Spear & Sons Limited of Maidenhead, Berkshire, England, a subsidiary of Mattel Inc. Mattel and Spear are not affiliated with Hasbro.