Certain terms, by an enigmatic stubbornness, persist long after their usefulness is ended. Such is the case of thehistiocyte—particularly in dermatology and dermatopathology.1Reports of the demise of thehistiocyte(italics to emphasize my disfavor), could not be too greatly exaggerated. Yet, the term perniciously remains as a curious and even arcane anachronism. Not only is the termhistiocyteof dubious origin, but its very meaning has an Alice-in-Wonderland quality in which the termhistiocytemay be used in almost any context regardless of its ancestry or cell lineage. (Somatocyte would be just as specific.) Heretical as it may appear, it is time to expose the histiocyte and its mastery of cellular disguise for the mononuclear imposter that it is. Thehistiocytewas a nicely tuned neologism coined by Aschoff and Kiyono2to describe large mononuclear phagocytes in tissue. Aschoff3subsequently included thehistiocytein