A jellyfish is a soft transparent sea creature that drifts and stings. A stinging jellyfish, jellyfish on the beach, a swarm of jellyfish.
It has no brain, no heart and no bones, and it is about ninety-five per cent water. The sting fires from cells that work mechanically and keep firing after the animal is dead, which is why a beached one is still dangerous. The plural is jellyfish.
1nounjellyfishA soft transparent sea creature that stings.
“She was stung by a jellyfish while swimming in the sea.”
jellyfish is a sea creature.
Jelly plus fish, from its gelatinous body. It is not a fish, and aquariums increasingly say sea jelly.
Built from
From jelly + fish. From jelly + fish. From being an aquatic creature (i.e. fish) that is gelatinous (“jelly”). Despite the name, jellyfish are not biologically classified as fish. The term appeared in the mid-19th century and displaced various older terms such as sea jelly (now much less common), blubber/sea blubber, nettle/sea nettle (both now referring to specific jellyfish species), and, in scientific literature, medusa.
Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA