Of or relating to a zoophyte or zoophytes; (also) produced by zoophytes.
Stressed as zooˈphytal.
1756
The account of zoophytal or animal ingraftings, received by Mr. Evelyn from a friend of his, was communicated by him.
T. Birch, History of Royal Societyvol. I. 110
1856
In animals, (such as many zoophytal organisms,) the sexes sometimes seem to be absent, and almost certainly do not pertain to two separate individuals.
L. H. Grindon, Life 299
1888
The horny Zoophytal growths.
Journal Conchol.vol. 5 178
1985
Discussions..about the possibility of a true ‘zoophytal’ creature had involved..a search for defining criteria of plants and animals.
P. R. Sloan in D. Kohn, Darwinian Heritage iii. 98
zoophytal typically occurs fewer than 0.01 times per million words in modern written English.
zoophytal is in frequency band 1, which contains words occurring fewer than 0.001 times per million words in modern written English. More about OED's frequency bands
Frequency data is computed programmatically, and should be regarded as an estimate.
Frequency of zoophytal, adj., 1810–2010
* Occurrences per million words in written English
Historical frequency series are derived from Google Books Ngrams (version 2), a data set based on the Google Books corpus of several million books printed in English between 1500 and 2010.
The overall frequency for a given word is calculated by summing frequencies for the main form of the word, any plural or inflected forms, and any major spelling variations.
For sets of homographs (distinct entries that share the same word-form, e.g. mole, n.¹, mole, n.², mole, n.³, etc.), we have estimated the frequency of each homograph entry as a fraction of the total Ngrams frequency for the word-form. This may result in inaccuracies.
Smoothing has been applied to series for lower-frequency words, using a moving-average algorithm. This reduces short-term fluctuations, which may be produced by variability in the content of the Google Books corpus.
Decade
Frequency per million words
1810
0.0031
1820
0.0028
1830
0.0023
1840
0.0021
1850
0.0021
1860
0.0016
1870
0.0008
1880
0.0003
1890
0.0001
1900
0.0001
1910
0.00001
1920
0
1930
0
1940
0
1950
0.000005
1960
0.000005
1970
0.000005
1980
0.000005
1990
0.000006
2000
0.000007
2010
0.000009
Originally published as part of the entry for zoophyte, n.