agaric

Noun

agaric (plural agarics)

1. Any of various fungi, principally of the order Agaricales, having fruiting bodies consisting of umbrella-like caps, on stalks, with numerous gills beneath.
   • […] these [commentators] were slight excrescences, mushrooms, champignons, that perished as the smoke of the dunghil evaporated, which reared them. A modern editor of Shakespeare is, on the contrary, a fungus attached to an oak; a male agaric of the most astringent kind, that, while it disfigures...1765, William Kenrick, A Review of Doctor Johnson’s New Edition of Shakespeare, London: J. Payne, page 88
   • Nobody cares for planting the poor fungus: so she shakes down from the gills of one agaric countless spores, any one of which, being preserved, transmits new billions of spores to-morrow or next day.1844, Ralph Waldo Emerson, “The Poet”, in Essays. Second Series, Boston: James Munroe, pages 24–25
2. A dried fruiting body of a fungus formerly used in medicine (now Laricifomes officinalis, formerly Fomitopsis officinalis, Fomes officinalis, Polyporus officinalis).
   • Agarick to purge his flegme, lest he be too drowsie1624, John Donne, Devotions upon Emergent Occasions, London: Thomas Jones, Devotion 8, Meditation, page 179