[L. tinea a gnawing worm, a moth, bookworm.]
1. Path. Technical name of the disease RINGWORM.
1398. Trevisa, Barth. De P. R., VII. iii. (Bodl. MS.). Þe heed is ofte dissesed with an yuel þatt children haue ofte … and we clepith þat yuel Tinea a moþþe, for it freeteþ and gnawith þe oure parties of þe skynne or þe heed as a moþþe freteþ clooþ.
c. 1400. Lanfranc’s Cirurgie, 181. Cirurgians … clepid tinean þere þat þere is corrupcioun in þe skyn wiþ harde crustis & quytture.
1693. trans. Blancard’s Phys. Dict. (ed. 2), s.v., If running Sores in the Head … continue long … they grow into Tineas, crusty stinking Ulcers of the Head, which gnaw and consume its Skin.
1804. Abernethy, Surg. Obs., 169. A circle of small sores, like what takes place in tinea.
1862. H. Macmillan, in Macm. Mag., Oct., 466. Yeast … granules may be made to induce the ordinary parasitic skin diseases—a few germs rubbed into the head … producing … tinea.
2. Entom. Name given by Haworth to a genus of small moths (Microlepidoptera), the larvæ of which are very destructive to cloth, feathers, soft paper, decaying wood, stuffed birds, etc., examples of which are the common clothes-moths, T. tapetzella, and T. pellionella, and the very destructive pest in museums of natural history, T. destructor. In earlier times the word was applied to other destructive insects and worms.
1658. Rowland, Moufet’s Theat. Ins., 1100. Pliny saith that Tineæ do destroy the seeds of Figs…. Niphus cals that little Scorpion which eats books Tineas, whereof I spake in the history of Scorpions.
1706. Phillips (ed. Kersey), Tinea,… the Moth, an Insect that eats Clothes.
Mod. The genus Tinea contains about 100 species, of which 15 were recorded as British in Rennie’s Conspectus, 1832.
Hence Tinean, Tineid a., of or belonging to the genus Tinea or family Tincidæ; sb. a member of this genus or family.
1891. Cent. Dict., Tinean, Tineid.
