cuttlefish

English

cuttlefish

Etymology

From cuttle +‎ fish.

Pronunciation

  • (Received Pronunciation) IPA(key): /ˈkʌtl̩fɪʃ/
  • Audio (Southern England):(file)
  • (General American) IPA(key): /ˈkʌt(ə)lfɪʃ/, (common but proscribed) /-təɹ-/, [-ɾ(ə)l]
  • Hyphenation: cut‧tle‧fish

Noun

cuttlefish (countable and uncountable, plural cuttlefishes or cuttlefish)

  1. Any squid-like cephalopods (marine mollusks) of the order Sepiida that have eight arms, two retractable tentacles, and a calcareous internal shell, and can eject a dark ink when threatened.
    Synonyms: cuttle, inkfish, sepia
    Hypernyms: cephalopod < mollusc < animal < organism < creature
    Hyponym: flamboyant cuttlefish
    Coordinate terms: octopus, squid, nautilus
    • 1961, Harry E. Wedeck, Dictionary of Aphrodisiacs, New York: The Citadel Press, page 72:
      Cuttle-fish, spiced oysters, sea hedge-hogs, and lobsters were among the ingredients of love-potions that reputed thaumaturgist Apuleius [...] was accused of have prepared in order to win the love of a widow.
    • 2017 August 9, Mark Carnall, “Why do cephalopods produce ink? And what's ink made of, anyway?”, in Katharine Viner, editor, The Guardian‎[1], London: Guardian News & Media, →ISSN, →OCLC, archived from the original on 13 October 2026:
      Fossilised ink sacs are more conclusively known from the extinct “soft-bodied” Coleoidea cephalopods in groups Belemitida (including belemnites with bullet-like internal skeletons commonly found as fossils) and Phragmoteuthida as well as from squid, octopus and cuttlefish fossils.

Derived terms

Translations

This page is issued from Wiktionary. The text is available under Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 4.0 unless otherwise noted. Additional terms may apply for the media files.