cuttlefish

UK/ˈkʌtl̩fɪʃ/US/ˈkʌt(ə)lfɪʃ/

nounB2+Rare in speech; mostly a word you read · #12,828 of 15,258neutral

A cuttlefish is a soft sea creature that changes colour and squirts ink. A cuttlefish in the shallows, cuttlefish ink, the cuttlefish flashed.

It changes colour in a fraction of a second with cells in the skin, and it does it while being colourblind, which nobody has fully explained. The white cuttlebone sold for budgerigars is its internal shell, and the ink was the original sepia.

Definitions of cuttlefish

1nouncuttlefishA soft sea creature that changes colour and squirts ink.B2+
“The cuttlefish changed colour to match the rocks and vanished from sight.”

cuttlefish is a sea creature.

Where it comes from

Cuttle comes from Old English cudele, the name of the creature, plus fish.

From cuttle + fish.

Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA

Practised in Insects & Sea Life

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cuttlefish in the wild

USS Cuttlefish, a Cachalot-class submarine and one of the "V-boats", was the second ship of the United States Navy to be named for the cuttlefish.
USS Cuttlefish (SS-171)
Like cuttlefish, they can swim by either using the fins on their mantle or by jet propulsion.
Bobtail squid
Sepia is a reddish-brown color, named after the rich brown pigment derived from the ink sac of the common cuttlefish Sepia.
Sepia (color)
The traditional recipe for this dish calls for squid ink, cuttlefish or squid, white rice, garlic, green cubanelle peppers, sweet paprika, olive oil and seafood broth.
Arròs negre
Black rice dishes with cuttlefish or squid ink are also made in Italy, Croatia and Montenegro, where they are known as "black risotto".
Arròs negre

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From Wikipedia, CC BY-SA 4.0. These sentences were written by other people about their own subjects; they are here to show the word at work, not as anybody’s opinion.

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