pedicular

Adjective

pedicular (not comparable)

1. Of or relating to lice.
   • We proceed—(at a tortoise or pedicular Crawl, you will say—but believe me, dear Boy! there is no other way of attaining a clear and productive Insight […] [)]1820, Samuel Taylor Coleridge, letter to Hartley Coleridge in H. J. Jackson (ed.), Samuel Taylor Coleridge: Selected Letters, Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1987, p. 226
   • Has humanity ever been put to a viler use than by the Banians of Surat, who support a hospital for vermin in that city, and regale the souls of their friends who are undergoing penance in the shape of fleas, or in loathsome pedicular form, by hiring beggars to go in among them, and afford them...1847, Robert Southey, chapter 212, in The Doctor, &c., volume 7, London: Longman, Brown, Green, and Longmans, page 139
2. Caused by lice.
   • And as for my Body, this shape which I now bear is more healthfull farr and neat, for now I am not subject to breed Lice and other Vermin; And whereas this pedicular disease, with a nomberlesse sort of other maladies and distempers, attend Mankind, ther’s but one onely disease that our Species is...1660, James Howell, Thērologia, The Parly of Beasts, London: William Palmer, Section 2, p. 26
   • Herod is said to have died of the Pedicular disease.1750, Ephraim Chambers, Cyclopædia, or an Universal Dictionary of Arts and Sciences, London: W. Innys et al., 6th edition, Volume 2, entry “Pedicularis morbus,”
3. Having the lousy distemper, phthiriasis; infested with lice.
   • When a philosopher condescends to regard commonplace man, he assumes much the attitude that a dandy might if brought, perforce, into contact with some one suspected of being pedicular.1923, Heinrich E. Buchholz, chapter 14, in Of What Use Are Common People? A Study in Democracy, Baltimore: Warwick & York, pages 196–197
   • The dead Americans stirred Harry more than the pedicular European Jews he observed at Bergen-Belsen.1968, Roger Kahn, The Passionate People: What it Means To Be A Jew in America, New York: William Morrow, Part 2, p. 93
4. Relating to a stem or pedicle.