Definition of "imbricated"

When the leaves and small and densely imbricated, they are generally considered to belong either to lycopodiaceæ or coniferæ; but there is so little to distinguish these families in a fossil state, that there is scarcely any means of demonstrating to which of these such genera as lycopodites, lycopodendron, juniperites, taxites, &c., and the like, actually belong.

1851, G. F. Richardson, Thomas Wright, “Fossil Botany”, in An Introduction to Geology, and Its Associate Sciences, Mineralogy, Fossil Biology, and Palæontology, new, rev. and considerably enl. edition, London: H[enry] G[eorge] Bohn, York Street, Covent Garden, page 171

As it flows it takes the forms of sappy leaves or vines, making heaps of pulpy sprays a foot or more in depth, and resembling, as you look down on them, the laciniated, lobed, and imbricated thalluses of some lichens; […]

1854 August 9, Henry D[avid] Thoreau, “Spring”, in Walden; or, Life in the Woods, Boston, Mass.: Ticknor and Fields

A leaf consists of two or three pairs of pinnae, each bearing many small leaflets. These, when the plant is asleep, are directed forwards and become imbricated.

1880, Charles Darwin, Francis Darwin, The Power of Movement in Plants‎

He stopped speaking for a moment, like a man walking who comes to a brink; perhaps it was an artful pause, but it made the stars, the night, seem to wait, as if story, narration, history, lay imbricated in the nature of things; and the cosmos was for the story, not the story for the cosmos.

1965, John Fowles, The Magus

the spaceport filled up with emptiness and that imbricated silence made up of the low roar of the air-cycling system, the hum of the robot sweepers, the sizzle of the noctolux lamps, and the sound of distant footsteps.

1996, Russell Hoban, Fremder, Bloomsbury, published 2003, page 50

Imbricated as competitors in the international system of imperialism, such regimes were far more invested in maximising their own power than in independent workers' movements, and were perfectly willing, where they could not control them, to betray, attack, or destroy them.

2022, China Miéville, chapter 5, in A Spectre, Haunting: On the Communist Manifesto