starfish
English
Pronunciation
Audio (US) (file)
Noun
starfish (plural starfishes or starfish)
- Any of various asteroids or other echinoderms (not in fact fish) with usually five arms, many of which eat bivalves or corals by everting their stomach.
- (obsolete) Any many-armed or tentacled sea invertebrate, whether cnidarian, echinoderm, or cephalopod.
- 1755, Erik Pontoppidan, trans. Isaac Kimbler, Explanation of the Plate of Uncommon Star Fish, Extracted from the Natural History of Norway
- But the largest of the star-fish kind is that sea monster called kruken, kraken or krabben. [...] As this enormous sea-animal in all probability may be reckoned of the polype, or of the star-fish, kind, it seems that the parts which are seen rising at its pleasure, and are called arms, are properly the tentacula, or feeding instruments, called horns as well as arms.
- 1755, Erik Pontoppidan, trans. Isaac Kimbler, Explanation of the Plate of Uncommon Star Fish, Extracted from the Natural History of Norway
- (slang) A woman who reluctantly takes part in sexual intercourse, and lays on her back while spreading her limbs.
- (vulgar, slang, usually in translations of Japanese pornography) an anus. See also chocolate starfish.
Translations
various echinoderms
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Verb
starfish (third-person singular simple present starfishes, present participle starfishing, simple past and past participle starfished)
- (intransitive) To assume a splayed-out shape, like that of a starfish.
- 1981, Kit Reed, Magic Time (page 229)
- "Oh you damn bastard, why won't you let anybody love you," and then, before I could stop her, she threw herself between us and the glowing suitcase, starfishing in the blaze of light as he blew up.
- 1981, Kit Reed, Magic Time (page 229)
- (transitive) To form into a splayed-out shape, like that of a starfish.
- 2011, Polly Williams, It Happened One Summer
- The sea roared up her nostrils, tunnelled into her ears, and flung her forward, then back, the current pulling her fingers apart, starfishing her hands.
- 2011, Polly Williams, It Happened One Summer
See also
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