pufferfish

US/ˈpʌfɚˌfɪʃ/

nounB2Very rare — outside the 30,000 commonest English words, so you will meet it in writing rather than in speechleans written

Other forms: pufferfishes

A pufferfish is the fish that blows itself into a spiky balloon when scared. Poke a pufferfish.

It fills with water rather than air, which works better and is harder to undo. A pufferfish carries a poison with no antidote and is eaten as a delicacy anyway.

Definitions of pufferfish

1nounpufferfishThe fish that blows itself into a spiky balloon when scared.B2
“The pufferfish doubled in size in about two seconds.”

pufferfish is a fish.

Also accepted in games: blowfish, puffer

Where it comes from

From puffer + fish.

Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA

Practised in Animals

Practise this word

pufferfish in the wild

The family includes many familiar species variously called pufferfishes, puffers, balloonfishes, blowfishes, blowers, blowies, bubblefishes, globefishes, swellfishes, toadfishes, toadies, botetes, toadle, honey toads, sugar toads, and sea squabs.
Tetraodontidae
The majority of pufferfish species are toxic, with some among the most venomous vertebrates in the world.
Tetraodontidae
"river pig"), is a genus of pufferfish currently with 25 species.
Takifugu
Tetraodon is a genus in the pufferfish family (Tetraodontidae) found in freshwater in Africa.
Tetraodon
The Congo puffer or potato puffer (Tetraodon miurus) is a freshwater pufferfish found in areas of the Congo River in Africa, including rapids.
Congo pufferfish

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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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