- Mold
- A large group of fungi (like Penicillium) that cause mold (as on bread or cheese). A common trigger for allergies.
* * *1. A filamentous fungus, generally a circular colony that may be cottony, wooly, etc., or glabrous, but with filaments not organized into large fruiting bodies, such as mushrooms. 2. A shaped receptacle into which wax is pressed or fluid plaster is poured in making a cast. 3. To shape a mass of plastic material according to a definite pattern. 4. To change in shape; denoting especially the adaptation of the fetal head to the pelvic canal. 5. The term used to specify the shape of an artificial tooth (or teeth). SYN: mould.- pink bread m. SYN: Neurospora.
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mold or chiefly Brit mould 'mōld n a cavity in which a fluid or malleable substance is shaped1) a superficial often woolly growth produced esp. on damp or decaying organic matter or on living organisms2) a fungus (as of the order Mucorales) that produces mold* * *
(mōld) [Middle English moulde] 1. an imprecise term used to refer to any member of one of the two largest groupings of fungi (the other being the yeasts); molds are parasitic and saprobic, and most exist as multicellular filamentous colonies. Common molds are Mucor, Penicillium, Rhizopus, and Aspergillus. See illustration. 2. the deposit or growth produced by such a fungus. 3. a form in which an object is given shape; see also cast. 4. an object so shaped. 5. the act of so forming or shaping.
Characteristic structures of common molds. (A), Sporangia of Absidia arising from a stolon; (B), conidiophores and conidia of Aspergillus; (C), brushlike conidiophores and parallel chains of conidia of Penicillium; (D), sporangiophores of Rhizopus arising from a node above the rhizoids.
Medical dictionary. 2011.
